loco-mbia

when g left ecuador 5 weeks ago, i flew straight to cali in colombia. arriving in that country was like a slap to the face with a hot fish: a hot fish that's laughing. everything was different. there was something more human and proud about the colourful architecture (a sharp contrast to ecuador's knife-to-the-wrist depressing cities of prison-grey). here i suddenly felt completely relaxed and safe. here the people were smiling, engaging, friendly and alive. here the people were sexy!

in fact, the colombians get a 7/10 on the ondrej population fuckability index. whilst they don't quite have denmark's 10/10 cold shower 5-times-a-day AAA rating, there is plenty of elbow-to-the-back-of-the-neck hyper-gorgeousness to keep one's eyes ogling and boggling from here to next christmas, and after 7 weeks in ecuador (1/10 on the ondrej population fuckability index), the sudden, sharp rise gave me a whiplash injury for which i had to seek urgent treatment.

for the first three weeks i volunteered at an association called manos amigas in the town of ibagué. this organisation basically tries to give the kids in the poorest part of town something to do when they aren't at school (thereby augmenting their education and keeping them off the streets where many adults are just lurking around taking drugs), and making sure that they get something to eat at least once a day.

they do an amazing job, and though in three weeks it's difficult to take ownership of a volunteer role and do anything significant, i loved my time there and the opportunity it gave me to see the life of these people. in particular, my little heart of stone would melt every time i was with the kids, and i became an unashamed and profligate cuddle merchant. it was a cuddling blitz! it was a cuddle-rama! it was a 3 week festival of cuddles! the open affection and love that these children express - children that have nothing to give but give it anyway - was so unbridled that i almost want to weep with joy when i think about it. love. it was like someone had pressed my 'restart' button, and when i woke up, i was deeply aware of just how wonderful this world was. how wonderful it is. colombia is all about love.

every weekend i did something different (half because i wanted to explore the surrounding area and half because i wanted to get away from the gringo i was living with whose negative energy left me catatonic. the poor guy tried to use cocaine as a substitute for personality, but you can't create something from nothing. when i caught him with his head shoved into his cupboard snorting a line so that he could make it through dinner, i regretted not snapping this low point in humanity with my camera for an awesome instagram photo. oh well - next time). 

weekend number one i disgraced myself by playing the typical australian tourist in cali and getting so drunk on free alcohol that i spent 12 hours repainting my hostel's bathroom with several tastefully chosen coats of bile, and hugely pissing off my date who had to carry me home. hello ondrej? what a loser.

weekend number two i escaped to the glorious mountains near salento in the coffee highlands for forest trekking, green relaxation and a dastardly bout of laryngitis.

and weekends number three and four i went to bogota searching for love...or its nearest equivalent. it turns out that cyndi lauper was mistaken when she sang about fun: it's not girls but boys that just wanna have fu-un. oh boys! just wanna have fun :) that's all they really wa-aa-aaant...

i might take this opportunity to mention the fact that in south america, god is winning. obviously first prize goes to jesus who just shits all over the opposition (though his mother is on the podium as well, either in second place or also in first place in an an equivalent setup to the masked polytheism of christianity's trinity). but they're not alone. i've seen not a few buddhist institutions, i stayed with the hare krishnas as you'll soon find out, and i even met some fake jews who clawed their way back through family trees desperate for a sense of identity, only to find themselves in synagogues where the rabbis were preaching the same nonsense we've come to know and hate from the churches, temples and mosques of the world. on the one hand i feel like throwing my hands up and saying 'god bless them all!', but as you know i feel that nothing undermines human intellectual integrity as much as the concept of god, especially within the confines of organised religion, and when i am witness to a classroom full of children who swing from the rafters and cannot concentrate for even 30 seconds during a lesson on short division but sit in silent awe during a daily prayer about jesus, mary and the rest of them, i'm deeply troubled by how inverted these priorities are. 

i wanted to avoid the madness of christmas (without being stuck in a hostel full of aussie tourists powdering their noses and talking about beer and pussy, something that would invariably precipitate an acute episode of 7th-floor auto-defenestration) so i headed off to a hare krishna retreat in the mountains near bogotá for a week of yoga, meditation and indentured labour.

i arrived on christmas eve and within a few hours found myself jumping up and down in the temple singing hare krishna to a trumpet rendition of jingle bells while a congo-line of children ran screaming around the room. something seemed extremely correct about the situation.

i loved the people there - both locals and gringos - made up of all sorts including business people, retirees, recovering drug addicts, a circus performer, and of course a few religious zealots. one of these zealots gave me a tour when I arrived, and as we paused in front of the closed altar in the temple she turned to me and said 'be here when the altar opens: you will receive so many blessings'. it was at this point that i noticed that her pupils were pinpoint, and i couldn't help thinking: 'my god, religion really is the opiate of the masses.'

incidentally, when the altar did open later that night there was what appeared to be a giant potato dressed in human clothing on it. my brain almost ate itself. you wouldn't believe how many blessings i received from that giant potato.

days either started at 4am with a morning worship (that i attended only once out of interest before i became completely devoid of interest 45 minutes later and headed back to bed) or otherwise yoga sessions at a more civilised hour run by awesome gringette hannah. every day we performed 5 hours of 'service'. i was made to chop wood, cut down trees, haul large rocks from one place to another and plough fields until i was barely breathing and begging for euthanasia. at this stage i casually pointed out to the hare krishnas that they were exploiting me (a comment that induced a ripple of panicked glances) and the rest of the week was spent painting pictures of cows on tiles, chopping vegetables or walking in the hills. lovely!

i can't say that the setting of the retreat was über-relaxing: my room was 50 metres from a busy four-lane highway vibrating with 24 hour road train traffic, and on the one occasion that i did a long hike into the hills behind the camp i was attacked by a vicious pack of 8 dogs that bit me on the foot as i jumped onto a ledge and started screaming like a child, certain that i would be ripped to pieces and devoured by those hounds, or at least die later from lack of access to adequate antibiotics. how very zen.

as much as i loved being there, by the end of the week i had accumulated so much good karma that i was feeling nauseated, so i hurried back to bogotá to restore the balance with lots of sex and drugs. now that's what i'm talking about.

my first time in bogotá, i opened the golden cage in which i keep my heart (i ripped that cage's fucking door off) and in that state of heart-cage doorlessness, i met jp, a boy i saw again before i went to the krishnas, and with whom i spent almost every minute of my time afterwards, up until the departure gates at el dorado airport last sunday afternoon.

we went camping, we went paragliding, we went partying, and we generally had the time of our lives. in this heavy ether of young love, i couldn't even wipe the smile off my face when we were attacked by four men armed with knives who robbed us of our money and documents. the boys missed one of jp's pockets so we still had enough cash to go and grab some dinner afterwards. it was perfect! 

i'm not going to rant on, but if the kids of ibagué pressed the reset button on my system, jp got rid of the system altogether. i feel that i'm experiencing a life-approach paradigm shift. my heart's going into super-nova and i'm ready to love everyone. i feel so excited about life that i want to scream!

i'm now back in berlin where it all started. g's got a funky little apartment here and this wonderful city really is the centre of the universe. it is pure potential. i'll be back in melbourne next friday. i'm not sure how i feel about coming back, but i do have the feeling that this adventure, now 10 months in, is just the beginning of something even greater. i realise that everything changes, everything moves on. all of our joys pass. our sadness passes too. it's easy to get lost dreaming about a shining past or a potential-laden future and forget that these things do not actually exist. all we have is this one moment, right now: this breathtaking, intense, ephemeral, love-filled, limitless, incredible moment. and then it is gone. enjoy it!

and see you soon :)