Dan’s Log.: February 2010

Right then. Where were we... Meditation... July... What have i been doing in the last 7 months? Well... Medellin, a city I have fallen in love with! Los Paisas! Parcereo! Que Chimba! Always ready to help you out and always partying hard. Colombia has the most national holidays in South America, possible in the world. Imagine, a day off every Monday for three consecutive weeks! THREE WEEKS! If you lived in Colombia, you wouldn´t need to. Stunning. Best places to go at night - one of the many parks! Always full of people and surrounded by bars. Take a Violin with you and you can´t fail to have a good time!

The of course there are the women. Only in Eastern Europe have I seen such consistent beauty, and it´s everywhere. Good old Joyj and I once discussed; each one is more beautiful than the last, but if you look back to the first, La Reina is somehow (somewhat unnervingly) yet more beautiful! Colombia has a massive gene pool. Indigenous, Black and Various European traits make for an impressive display of what humanity can do, and Medellin has the best of it all. Trust me.

And this is the point in the story when the financial situation... becomes more... interesting. Broke might be a better way to describe things. I´d lived frugally, kept partying to a minimum (at times) and even taken to work! Alas, it was to be known that one day (maybe one day very soon) that magic hole in the wall would stop spitting out precious paper. And then what. Go home? Um. That wasn´t really the "plan". Not that there is a "plan" but you get the point. I didn´t really need to think to hard about what to do next. I had a violin. People liked hearing it. Not many people play it here and a random Gringo playing it in the street, restaurant, bus, nay, even at the trafficlights with a guy throwing around a fire-stick can´t fail but bring in the loose change!! And that is where Jhonney comes back into the story.

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Right... well i wrote all that a whilst ago now. Some time before Christmas at least cause it was all some time before Mel. Long story short, I was drunk Christmas eve in Taganaga (Caribbean coast of Colombia) and we met, Christmas day we snogged in the warm waters of the Caribbean sea, early in the morning and we´ve been together ever since. She´s great. However, Mel is doing a month Telf at the moment (English teacher training or something) so I am getting no attention. Bloody english teachers.

Basically i´d love to fill you all in on the intricate details of what I´ve been up to but to be honest i can´t be bothered. I´ve left it too long now and too much has happened most of which I can´t remember clearly anyway but here are a few highlights...

Salasacas. Some time last year, July, August ish. (I don´t really do dates anymore)

The Salasacan´s were a tribe from Bolivia which the Incas took it upon themselves to move to Ecuador. General consensus is that they were a troublesome bunch of lads but not exactly bad enough to slaughter so the Inca´s punished them buy moving them into the only barren and hard to farm area in an otherwise blossoming valley. It´s Crazy. The land around is volcanic and fertile but the village of Salasacas lies in a dust bowl of a semi desert. Sorry if my history is inaccurate there, it was gleamed from conversations with an Ecuadorian guy named Angel who spoke no English. These days my Spanish is alright, back then... communication was a strong word for what went on, but the point seamed to get across and I had some idea of what was going on, most of the time.

Anyway, The Kattitawa school and Rosa Maria Biblioteca were the 1st multicultural facilities in the region, teaching in both Spanish and Quechua. Basically, I spent about a month teaching the kids music and maths, plastering walls, Busking in Baños, building walls, playing music, moving earth and eating pudding. Seriously. Pudding everyday. We took it in turns to make some kind of sweeeeeeeeeeeeet treat EVERY day. On my last day we made 2. Monkey bread (oh yeah).

I could talk about this place all day. Beautiful, stunning, snow capped mountains, crazy plants growing everwhere, livestock, locals as they should be, indigenous, kind, smiling, playing vollyball, chasing the sheep, dancing and playing the Dulce melodies of the musica andina! Of course the best part (even better than pudding) was teaching the kids. I had the overwhelming joy of starting up music classes. I´d thought about doing things like this before, how we´d make loads of instruments out of recycled stuff found around the place and then make wonderful music. As it was a charming Aussie guy Ken (who had brought his 15yr old son Hayden with him) brought a load of guitars and a melodica, and with the melodica i had got in panama as a birthday present to myself (see Dans log panama edition, i´m sure i mentioned it there, the kids had it in Jurado tambien), we were ready to go. I was slightly sad about the lack of recycled fun but hey. You can´t complain when someone buys guitars. That's just not cricket.

Basically I spent 5 weeks making up songs with the kids, playing rhythm games and singing La Piña (lyrics below, didn´t teach the kids the mango bit). Heaven. We made such a racket! It was great! Even managed to put on a little performance at the end my time there. La Piña, naturally. 4 guitars, 3 melodicas and clapping. The little lovelies didn't let me down. They rocked.

These kids are great. So much energy. So much fun. Yes there are cultural differences that you need to get over but you should see these guys climb a tree. Jesus. They´d be 20m up a pine tree in 20 seconds and down (without falling) in 10. Wamari was the best. That kids just got it.

One day we taught them bulldog. That was fun. Then they thought us a lovely little game they have. La Cebollita (the little onion). Basically split a bunch of kids into 2 teams the more the merrier. Take the biggest 2 kids out of each team. Find 2 trees close to each other that that the kids can get there arms around. Basically the kids sit down in a line and put there arms around the waist of the kid in front, the kid at the front hugs the tree. The biggest kids job is the "harvest" the " little onions" one buy one. This can be done in a variety of ways. the line is drawn at violence, but you know, cultural differences and all... violence has many names and forms... nothing is black and white. From the word go it is mayhem. Screaming, shouting, pulling, all kinds of insanity. I was the biggest kid on my team (naturally, and i always will be). Must stress i didn´t resort to violence. Tickling was all i needed, combined with screaming and shouting at them. And i won.

Like all good things it had to come to and end (god damn visa, I look to a world without boarders, where we can all travel freely. It is frankly insulting how easily I can travel, as a british citizen, yet for people from here to go anywhere it is a butt load of effort) and end it did. For more info on what goes on there take a look at http://sumakkausayyachay.blogspot.com/ and if you like it, feel free to give them some cash, they run on very little funding as there is still no government funding for projects that teach in Quechua. Naturally I was (and remain) broke so could give nout but my time, buy a few quid from any of you lot would go a long way out here (hint hint hint!)... Simply click the donate button on the main page and mention me in the info section so they know i ain´t forgotten them.

Oh, also very quickly, Salasacas lies and hours away form the tourist town of Bañon famed for it´s miraculous waterfall/spring which comes out of the cliff some insane distance in the air, a stunning albeit totally natural phenomenon that the Spanish conquistadors took for some kind of divine sign and turned the place into a kind of perverted holy land. These days people come from all over Ecuador to bathe the murky red pools of volcanic water, drink the naturally sparkling radioactive spring water, observe the miraculous fall and buy various kitch Jesus/Mary related objects each with their own very special power to confuse and belittle the mind into believing in god.

All this made Baños a great place to busk. People are always in a better mood when they are travelling and throw in a bit of Jesus mysticism and you´re onto a definite winner (actually there was a bit of the problem in the 60/70 with hippies invading the town, musicians and pot heads everywhere. In the end the locals got together and chased them out. Damn right too. bloody stinking hippies. I really cant talk. i´m get more hippylike everyday and i love it. All this meant i had to be slightly careful but it was fine!) . So this is where I spent my weekends. In the evenings i´d head doen to the Pipe bar and jam all night long to a mostly empty room but that's fine. Big props the Baños massive!!

Right. That was supposed to be a brief overview of everything i done lately but it didn´t work out like that. I´ll catch up later. Now i´m off to the library to continue my exploration Latin music then off to the street.
VIVA COLOMBIA
JUMP OFF THE GRAVY TRAIN
WARNING, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG! or at least that's what Akira told me and I tend to believe him.

hasta pronto!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlS3MysA0Bs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzXJPA5V4g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GeZFOAcp_0