JJ's Travelogue

I arrived in Barranquilla last Sunday even though the big parades for Carnaval don’t begin until Saturday (tomorrow). I thought there would be pre-Carnival fiestas and such. There have been occassional events since January, but very sporadically. Not much going on this week. No problem I thought, I’ll explore the city for other things to do. There must be a reason it’s Colombia’s fourth-largest city, right? Shakira, Gabriel García Márquez and Nina Garcia all hail from here, so there must be something that inspired them.

Well, I’ve spent the last four days walking.. and walking.. probably over 200 blocks altogether, looking for something, anything interesting. Nada. It’s an ugly, sprawling mess of a city. There is no central downtown, it’s slightly dangerous, dirty, the architecture sucks, there are no parks or beaches, in summary there is absolutely no reason to come here other than for Carnaval. The people are friendly, though. They speak a bastard form of Spanish here on the Carribean coast – I’ve tried having conversations with several people but although each of us is ostensibly speaking the same language, we haven’t understood one word each other was saying.

I found the Carnaval Festival office where I got some nice advice from some friendly middle-aged women, one of whom gave me her phone number (unprovoked)! Oddly, they didn’t have a detailed schedule of the events – instead, I found this at the Modern Art Museum (which turns out to be a small gallery of one artist’s work). I also wandered into the famous municipal theatre,which turns out to be the same size and vintage (1980′s) as my college theatre. Funny.

I can’t find a map of the city that I’m allowed to take. To solve this, I took a photograph of the map at the hotel. Point and shoot cameras are of high enough resolution nowadays that when I need to refer to the map, I just turn on my camera and zoom all the way down to the detail I need. It takes a bit of panning around, but works quite well. Pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself.

The 20 square blocks around my hotel looks like one enormous Canal Street, with a bit of Fulton Mall thrown in. You can find parts for that old fan that stopped working in the 70′s, get that broken watch band repaired, shoes resoled, anything. One entire street is solely electrical parts sold by dozens of different vendors. Another street has ancient men in tiny wooden booths sweating over broken TV’s, hundreds of parts strewn around them. Things we would have thrown out long ago and replaced with a new one, they repair here. Then there are the chachka vendors – all the crap that tourists buy, only I don’t know who they’re selling it to, since I’ve seen maybe two other white people in the last five days. Of course you have the usual fruit and fish sellers.. and I’m sure you can imagine the stench in this hot climate.

One interesting thing I stumbled upon was a funeral procession. They passed me in the street and I followed them into the large cemetery. This was fascinating – the entire experience was completely different from funerals in North America and Western Europe. It was messy, chaotic, and overflowing with emotion. None of that staid, restrained formalness we know as funerals. The procession zoomed through the streets with a wave of honking and revving engines, at last pulling up into the cemetery. The motorcycles went straight down these walkways, noisily flying all over the grounds.

The casket was haphazardly carried (at times almost running) on the shoulders of young men with a swarm of grievers vieing for proximity. There was anger as well as grief – occassionally people hit the coffin, striking it with a loud smack. Once in a while, when the weight was too much to bear or the emotions overcame them, the casket would be set down on whatever was nearby (usually a tomb). Women would rush the casket anxious to touch it or in some cases even climbing upon it, kissing it, ultimately opening it and clutching the body one last time, not wanting to let go. They were even yelling at the body. Great outpouring of tears and grief. I’m deducing the deceased was a young man who died suddenly.

Occassionally someone (not on the casket) would freak out in hysterics and a group would form around to comfort and calm her down. All this went on for quite some time. Meanwhile on the periphery some looked bored, others played with their phones or took pictures. People were dressed quite casually, as if they were out for a day at the mall. Jeans and t-shirts, sneakers. A lot of the women did wear black shirts, but they were still quite casual.

After about an hour another funeral came up the path and upstaged the first one – all the fringe people from the first one got distracted by this new development and paid attention to that now. This one was interesting because I think the casket was headed for one of the upper crypts, which required the fetching of a ladder and several young men to hoist themselves up onto the roof of the affair in order to help pull it into place. It’s like they were building a house, with the lack of formality and procession.

Colombia has been experiencing some natural disasters this week – a volcano in the southwest is threatening eruption, causing the evacuation of the neighboring town. There is severe flooding in another part of the country. All these are far from me. I’m only just beginning to grasp the size of South America, I’ve been so used to the small countries of Central America. Unbelievably, I’m still closer to NYC than I am to Buenos Aires (by 1,300 miles!) – and that’s not even in the south of Argentina!

Now for some random tidbits:

The last night in my hotel in Cartagena, I met two American girls who live in Quito (Ecuador) and work as travel writers for a guidebook company based there. Interesting.

Except in very fancy restaurants that know better, red wine is always refrigerated. Yuck.

Flipping through the channels last night I happened upon an actor I worked with for many years back in Seattle in the 90′s. I love when that happens! His name is Bill Hall, and even after six weeks of watching Sizwe Bonsi is Dead, his performance always brought me to tears. Googling around for this link, I just learned that another longtime Group Theatre alum, John Gilbert, passed away a couple of years ago. Still, many of us went on to bigger and better things, strengthened by the nurturing of that formative place. But I digress..

I passed by a gynecologist / dentist’s office. Somehow I think those doctors just shouldn’t be in practice together. Then again, maybe it’s one and the same doctor. Which gets me thinking about vagina dentata. You really don’t want to read this. I know, leave it to me to drive this blog off the cliff of civility.

It’s a bit like halloween around here, what with all the masks and wigs for sale on the street.

Finally, last night I got a taste of what this weekend holds in store. First, I passed by one of the groups practising their routines in a park. A small band (brass and drums) was providing the beat for about 40 dancers. Fun. Then I went to an event in a park that featured dozens of traditional singers, dancers, and musicians. Here is an audio clip I recorded on the iPhone. Those flutes always sound out of tune to me, but maybe they’re just microtonal.
There was a great vibe there – at last I see the middle class out of their fenced compounds. The entire affair was very relaxed. I was free to wander around backstage. There was a reflecting pool about 20′ from stage left, and occassionally kids would push each other into it. More and more got into the game until there were about 30 kids going nuts in this thing, throwing water everywhere. Some irate adults and staff from the festival began berating the only cop on duty, telling him to quell the crazy kids. It was funny watching him trying in vain, the kids completely ignoring his protestations. It finally took a stern matron to get them to come out and settle down. Dang adults, always spoiling all the fun.

After I had my fill there, I went to another part of town where the crowning of the king and queen (“Reinas y Rey Momo”) of Carnaval was taking place. This was an amazing spectacle – Bob Fosse meets Vegas (alright, they already met) meets Latin culture and rhythms. I know, I need a better metaphor. Blame it on the weak coffee. Anyway, it had high production values, dozens upon dozens of fabulous dancing girls and boys dressed in completely over the top costumes doing extremely physical dancing / acrobatics at ten times the tempo you’ve ever witnessed. I really think they were superhumans. Unfortunately I was stuck far away (in the free seats) and didn’t have my camera with me. But I’m sure I’ll get some great shots of the parades this weekend.

Marissa’s Colombian friend Eloisa thought that I should be in a parade. It was very nice of her to give me the info and although it would be a unique experience, I think I would rather watch. Maybe if I spoke better Spanish and had a partner in crime. So rather than stand with the punters along the street where I may not see much, get exhausted and probably pickpocketed, I opted to buy a ticket to sit in the stands. Tomorrow is the Battle of Flowers parade, Sunday is the Great Tradition Parade, Monday is the Festival Orchestra Parade followed by the Great Fantasia Parade. Tuesday sees the Festival of Dances and Special Relationships (some of these translations just don’t carry the meanings, methinks), the “Jimmy is from the Ashes” event, and a half dozen other goings on. I have no idea what any of these are, but I’m sure they’ll be fabulous. I hope I can keep my energy up to attend everything!

Here is a “slice of life” video near my hotel