Colombia 101

I am here in Bogota to teach English but obviously, my own cross-cultural learning experience is one of the main goals of this exchange.  The lessons of this past week have been a bit of a crash course:

Cukas are a typical Colombian dessert made with panela (pre-processed sugar), flour, and eggs.  Also “cuka” is a slang word for a woman’s....

"Tinto" is not short hand for vino tinto.  I couldn’t figure out why so many people kept offering me red wine in the middle of the day until, after a long day of class, I eagerly accepted... only to be disillusioned when my colleague returned with a tiny cup of black coffee. 

Flying a kite is harder than it looks. 

The conversational question, “If you were a type of food what would you be and why?” is fertile ground for all kinds of sexual innuendoes in a classroom of 20-somethings. 

Going to a free music festival is less about seeing the bands and more about experiencing the sweating breathing whirlpool pit of Salsa aficionados.  I pretended to be annoyed at the people attempting to traverse the crowd, shoving through the sardine-packed masses, but I secretly liked the silly sensation of being jostled around like a human sock in a giant washing machine. 

Pedestrians do not have the right of way.

Always wait if you can’t initially get the lid off the pressure cooker.  The faint smell of what I mistakenly took for burning plastic caused a minor panic that the lid seal had melted to the pot of our boiling beans.  When we (my roommate Pauline and I) couldn’t open it, we resorted to desperate measures.  In a valiant effort to rescue our hard-labored meal from imprisonment, Pauline set the pot on the floor and curb stomped the lid like a Chicago thug knocking someone's teeth out.  Hear: shotgun fired at close range.  Picture: Pauline standing up against the wall spattered from head to toe in a bath of steaming exploded red beans that looks like dragon vomit. 

“You learn something new every day” is an understatement. 

Ta da!

If there was a circus performance parodying a stereotypical first day of school, today I was the star.

Act One: While maneuvering my bike over some railroad tracks at a busy intersection, I graced the posse of school-uniformed pedestrians with a 45-second dance of arm flailing and one-footed hopping,  in a failed attempt to salvage my balance.  Exit Stage Left with the universal I’m-OK hand signal.

Act Two: After being hissed at by a police officer for trying to park my bike in an apparently illegal spot, I was taking the long cut across campus (I made the mistake of orienting myself by “The Building with Che Guevara’s face painted on it”--as if there were only one).  Suddenly, a stray soccer ball whizzed across a field and smacked me square in the shoulder.  Cue drums: Ba da boom, psh!

Act Three: The curtain opens on a sunny courtyard, strewn with lounging students and food vendors. At last!  My building.  I stride confidently to the entrance steps and... smack.  Was there a banana peel on that first step?  This time I didn’t bother with the I’m-OK hand signal.  I just laughed at my own improvised slap stick routine and walked (on two feet, without falling) to my classroom.

Act Four: Costume change: clown to superhero.  As soon as the students pieced together why there was an obviously American girl in an English class, you could almost feel the ground rumbling as the imaginary pedestal emerged beneath me.  The new assistant!  You would have thought I was performing a Shakespeare play when I was walking them though a reading worksheet.  They adore native English speakers like kids adore their fourth grade science teacher.

Act Five: An actual circus.  As a karmic congratulations for weeks of jumping through hoops and surviving the comedy of errors that was my first day of school, I walked out of class to find a huge crowd circled around spandexed contortionists and jugglers on stilts in the Plaza Che. I stayed to watch and treated myself to an oblea (caramel/fruit sauce/wafer sandwich).  I think it’s going to be a good year.

Mañana

“Bienvenida a America Latina (Welcome to Latin America),” Claudia laughed.

It’s been exactly one month since my English Teaching placement at La Universidad Nacional, 16 days since my arrival in Bogota, and over a week since my first meeting with Maria Elena, my contact and ‘mentor professor’ at the University. I still don’t have my teaching schedule. I went this morning to see if I could observe a class, but getting a concrete answer from someone in the Edificio de Lenguas (language department building) is like trying to wrestle a jellyfish.

I called Maria Elena but she wouldn’t be coming in until later because she was getting her nails done. I asked Gloria the secretary and she referred me to Pilar the secretary who punched in a few numbers on her desk phone and then shrugged her shoulders when no one picked up. Freddy the tech guy furrowed his brow intently at my predicament, held up a give-me-one-sec finger and then literally ran away. Ironically these are precisely the four people who had emphatically told me on my first day on campus, “Cualquier cosa, cualquier duda que tienes, no demores en avisarme... (If you have any problem or any question whatsoever, don’t hesitate to let me know)”

I had started knocking on random office doors when I met Claudia. After she laughed, she nodded knowingly and explained to me that, “Esta es la universidad de mañana. Siempre estamos diciendo ‘Mañana, mañana...’ (This is the university of tomorrow. We’re always saying ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow...)” She urged me to calm down and relax, even though all I had asked her was if Profe Elizabeth had been in yet--I got the feeling that Claudia liked giving this schpeel to foreigners, as a way of demonstrating cultural awareness.

So I smiled, thanked her, and said that perhaps I would see her tomorrow...

Crutches

I hate Walmart as much as any good farmers marketeering Peace Studies major. Naturally, I am enthralled with the idea of buying products directly from the producer or beneficiary (keyword: “idea”). But as a child of the Big Box Nation, I simply cannot help the awkward aversion that instinctually prevents me from approaching the vendors on the streets of Bogota. It’s not a language barrier, not a safety issue, and not even indifference (sometimes I really am interested in buying knock-off sunglasses for 5.000 pesos). It’s a gap between two distinct consumer cultures.

Our friend Karl calls my syndrome “alienation”--a state which I apparently have grown quite fond of. It wasn’t until I lived outside of Supermarketlandia that I realized the comfort I feel inside anonymous fluorescent aisles. I find myself missing the luxury of perusing brands of oatmeal, comparing prices, ingredients, and nutrition information without so much as a word from The Quaker Man pressuring me to buy one. The hairnetted ladies at Costco won’t utter more than a brief impersonal schpeel about their ravioli samples, even after I’ve gone back two or three times. But if I so much as raise my glance at the empananda stand, you can bet I will be personally called out and harangued all the way down the block-- “Oye mona (blonde)! Empanadas! Empandas! Para la gringa! A la orden!”

I flee. The express-lane self-checkout American doesn’t know how to handle actually speaking to a human while buying something.

To celebrate my first payday, I found myself sheepishly slipping through the automatic doors of El Exito--back into the consumer world I understand. Where things have prices (that aren’t based on your hair color). Where you can choose between sweetened and sugar free yogurt. Where the cashiers have change. And there were samples! The whole experience felt like cheating. But I secretly relished it.

...and it gets worse. I bought a food processor to make peanut butter.

What can I say? I like to have a few crutches when assimilating into a new culture.
1. Peanut butter. Check.
2. Exercise. There’s a park and a climbing wall only a few miles from where I live. Check.
3. Jon Stewart. I have high speed internet in my apartment. Check.

Now I am armed and ready to tackle whatever cultural challenges come my way. Bring in on.
(OK, I admit, sometimes I still have trouble focusing my eyes on people’s faces when their noses are only three inches away--this is deemed the appropriate speaking distance in Colombia. But I’m sure I will adjust eventually.)

The only risk

...well, except for the occasional scams, robberies, muggings, kidnappings, and general street harassments.

The U.S. security officer promised that it was not his aim to scare or intimidate anyone.  However, he did want everyone to be aware of the potential dangers involved living in a city of eight million people with more than 50% of the population below the poverty line.

The first portion of his informative presentation was a vocabulary lesson:

Paseo Milionario: A joy ride at gunpoint to a series of ATMs from which you are kindly asked to withdraw the maximum amount of cash.  

FARC, ELC, and AUC: Colombian paramilitary groups.  Responsible for $200 to $500 million in kidnappings.

Scopolamine: Dopamine on steroids.  Side effects include nondiscretionary openness to suggestion (“Back to my place? Ok,”) and interference with the synapses that make memories.

Next he shared some general safety tips:

1.  When someone approaches you claiming to be an undercover cop on a mission to sequester counterfeit currency, call the police station before handing him all of your money.

2.  Don’t let people “test out” your bike.

(and my personal favorite)

3.  If you are being threatened, do not resist...Unless you are being stabbed, in which case resistance would be quite prudent.

But, mom and dad, not to worry.  The Americans that actually live here can assure that living in Bogota only requires the vigilance and common sense necessary for any large city.  Although they do not deny the high prevalence of the risk of wanting to stay.

The honeymoon

Scientists, musicians, athletes, and activists are among them, but the Fulbright Scholar is somewhat a species of its own.  And when a flock of them are herded together in an exotic environment, a peculiar dynamic emerges.

Each is a leader, but also a diplomat. All are intelligent, but none are highly experienced in this particular context.  Everyone feels slightly anxious in the new and unexplored territory, but no one wants to seem nervous or unsettled.  The goal is to appear assertive yet nonchalant.  A typical interaction may proceed as follows:

“Do you know when we’re getting our visas?”

“Probably tomorrow, but I’m not worried about it.  Did you ask Alexandra?”

“No, I’m sure it will work out.”

“Are we going out for dinner later?”

“Yeah, at some point.  Do you know of a place to go?”

“No, we’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, whatever.  Something will happen.”

The key is to emphasize unpreparedness as a way to highlight a near professional level of spontaneity. For example:  

“I didn’t read any of the information packet, I just met a guy when I arrived and it was no big deal.”

Independence without isolation.  Freedom without insecurity.  

According to someone, the first stage of cultural immersion is the honeymoon.  But that only comes after the awkward dating stage, in which The Fulbrightus Sapien attempts to impress The Culture and trick her into thinking he is not intimidated by her beauty.  

But once sufficiently fed and slightly inebriated, pretenses within the group melt enough for everyone to effortlessly soak in the enchanting newness of a foreign place.  A place where spicy brass music plays through all six stories of a downtown restaurant.  Where a birthday is celebrated with a shower of confetti hearts and not one, not two, but three rounds of the Happy Birthday song played by a five-man band.  Where a party is not a party if there is no dancing.  Let the romance begin. 

Fulbright, dimmed.

T minus 4 days until I depart for Colombia (that's ColOmbia as in South America, not ColUmbia University in New York, to clarify a common misconception).


I will be going as a Fulbright Scholar. 


Official (Wikipedia) definition of the Fulbright Program:  Prestigious merit-based grants to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills.  


Actual definition (from what I have gathered thus far): What the government does with all of the non-vocationally oriented LIberal Arts kids who have received its subsidized education.

With all the funding funneling into lovely private universities and the thousands of taxpayer dollars distributed in Stafford loans every year, the State is manufacturing a small army (no pun intended) of young experts in International Relations, Cross-Cultural Studies, Peace Studies, Diplomacy Sciences, etc.  And at the end of the assembly line, the shiny idealists are prime and ready to go out to the battlefield and relate internationally (in a nonviolent way)!  But how can one do so without being perceived as an aimless globe-trotting vagabond?  With a government seal, of course (normally in the form of a Peace Corps or Fulbright polo shirt).


I, personally, have no problem with being an aimless globe-trotting vagabond.  But if someone is going to front the bill for my flight and housing arrangements in exchange for "community development" and teaching English part time, sign me up.


Many brilliant and earth-changing people proudly bear the Fulbright badge.  I hope to join their ranks.  And no one (except maybe Rush Limbaugh) will deny that this world could use a lot more idea sharing between different kinds of people in a non-militant, non-imperialist way.  And for that (and the free trip), I love Fulbright.  I believe in the mission statement.  I believe in the objectives.


What I don't believe in is the religious adoration of a program that is not much more than humans meeting other humans.  I don't believe in the self-congratulatory elitism of a name--no matter what the historical affiliation.  I want to see this institution for what it is: an opportunity to see another part of the world, to learn, and to teach.  Not an automatic one-up card or a gold star of specialness.  


The Fine Print: (they asked us to post this on any web postings we publish during the grant period)
This is not an official Department of State website.  The views and information presented are personal and they do not represent the Fulbright Program or the Department of State.