While interested in finding out the name of the María Mulata album (called ‘Itinerario de Tambores’), I found their Myspace page which has links to a variety of videos (in SP) on a French site called Wat.tv. Otherwise, Youtube has a short documentary (with subtitles) on the band, which I’ll post below.
Check it out!
“Few know the engravings and paintings on the boulders are dated from between 500 and 7,000 years ago, and because they don’t know, the ancient arts are slowly being destroyed. Each year in el Nilo, in the southeast of Cundinamarca, on a eve of the summer solstice, a group of people meet around the three circles painted on the rocks. The figure is understood as a calendar of the ancestors and this is why it is seen as sacred.
The area is supposedly protected from vandalism but, according to experts, there are few which are still untouched by modern society. Since the people are unaware that one of the most precious pieces of the past sits right in their own department, they don’t respect the area as they should.
This ‘open-air museum’ today seems to be condemned to disappear. “Many engravings and paintings are close to urban areas and the others are being absorbed by the environment”, signals Diego Martínez , an investigator looking into the matter. Close to San Mateo, in Soacha, many places where the engravings are, are today merely used as landfills or pig farms, and in Facatativá the paintings are completely covered with graffiti.” – El Tiempo (translated by me, more here)
I’m sure I’ve mentioned jugo de lulo before as one of Colombia’s best juices, but I never explained (nor knew, until now) what lulo actually is. In Spanish, naranja means orange and lulo’s other name (outside of Colombia) happens to be naranjilla, or ‘little orange’. The fruit is as attractive to look at as its juice is to drink (just look at the photo below!).
According to Wikipedia, the fruit has a citrus flavour, sometimes described as a combination of rhubarb and lime. The juice of the naranjillas is green and is often used as a drink. The naranjilla fruit is harvested when fully ripe to avoid the fruit becoming sour.
At Purdue University’s horticulture site, they list some common uses for lulo in food and drink.
“Ripe naranjillas, freed of hairs, may be casually consumed out-of-hand by cutting in half and squeezing the contents of each half into the mouth. The empty shells are discarded. The flesh, complete with seeds, may be squeezed out and added to ice cream mix, made into sauce for native dishes, or utilized in making pie and various other cooked desserts. The shells may be stuffed with a mixture of banana and other ingredients and baked. But the most popular use of the naranjilla is in the form of juice. For home preparation, the fruits are washed, the hairs are rubbed off, the fruits cut in half, the pulp squeezed into an electric blender and processed briefly; then the green juice is strained, sweetened, and served with ice cubes as a cool, foamy drink. A dozen fruits will yield 8 oz (227 g) of juice. Commercially, the juice is extracted mechanically from the cleaned and chopped fruits, strained, concentrated and canned or put into plastic bags and frozen.
Sherbet is made in the home by mixing naranjilla juice with corn sirup, sugar, water, and a little lime juice, partially freezing, then beating to a froth and freezing. Naranjilla jelly and marmalade are produced on a small scale in Cali, Colombia.”
While browsing PoorButHappy Colombia, I came across the subject for the previous post (cutting in line) as well as the subject for this post, which has been split into two concepts revolving around awareness and both share similar origins.
Dar Papaya
There’s a common phrase in Colombia that says “a papaya dada, papaya partida”. Basically it means, “what has been given, can be taken”, so take care of your belongings (that advice isn’t meant to scare you, it’s merely thinking smartly)! Papaya in this case can be anything and everything that has or is perceived to have value. While I haven’t noticed the papaya dicho (saying) being played out in front of my eyes in Colombia, I’m more than sure a lot of Colombian papayas have fallen on the Brazilian side of the common border the two countries share.
In the “Dar papaya” post, the following rules are laid out…
“The papaya rule consists of two simple sentences but underneath these lie a lot of interpretations. First let’s take a look at the rules:
Rule number one: You cannot give papaya to anyone! Rule number two: If you see papaya you have to take it! These are the rules as simple as they look. But lets take a closer look at the two.
First of all the word papaya is not the main thing in the sentence. It could have been any fruit or any other object for that matter. I’m not really sure why it was papaya and not something else that was chosen, but no importa as we say.
Papaya in this context means more or less everything and even situations!
You should not do anything that lets other people take advantage of you. Here we are back with the miniskirt. If you are a girl and you wear a short skirt you are giving papaya to all the guys who look at your legs! Don’t leave your house without locking the door, don’t park your nice car in the center of town at night and don’t leave your wallet unattended.
Why not? – because you are giving papaya!
These are a few examples of more or less material things, but the rule also applies to things that you say or do. If you tell your friends that you did some really stupid thing the other day and they laugh at you for the rest of your life it is your own fault. You gave them papaya, and according to rule number one you cannot give papaya.
Well you can then say that the friends who laugh at you are not really good friends, but that is not true. They are your best friends and will stay your best friends even after that.
Here we get down to rule number two. It clearly states that if you are telling your friends that you did something stupid they HAVE to make fun of you. They simply have no choice other than do so. If not – they will break the second papaya rule.”
Malicia Indigena
Perhaps the ‘malicious indigenous people’ were exceptionally good at growing papayas as there’s another popular dicho in Colombia that pretty much means the same thing as the expression above. Let’s go over the explanation given on PBH…
“”Malicia indigena” is a floating concept, but generally meant as a positive kind or awareness and smartness that the indigenous peoples of Colombia posess. It’s quite misleading as there’s not so much malice involved in it, just cunningness, pre-meditation and awareness of circumstances. It’s supposed to be a trait of personality inbred in the population in Colombia, regardless of your color or ethnicity.
Originally, I believe, it was meant as something negative, because the indigenes tend to mistrust the “whites” (for a good reason) and would be extremely cautious and withdrawing in all their dealing with the dominating classes (criollos and later the mestizos). This wariness and lack of trust was misinterpreted as “malicia”. The concept stuck, but evolved into what people nowadays mean by malicia indigena.”
Over at PBH Colombia, there’s a thread dealing with Colombians going to the front of a line without acknowledging the existence of that very line. In my opinion, if stepping back from the individual occurance and looking at the whole picture, it comes down to a feeling of resignation that things won’t change due to a single person’s actions therefore it’s okay to do as you please. It is a learned habit via the ‘example of the father’ (“if someone with more or equal authority did it, why can’t I?”). I am definitely not saying everyone does it but it is an accepted cultural norm. This idea centered around resignation happens a lot in Brazil too, so I feel for the guy in the story below…
“Both foriegners and native colombians, how do you handle this?
Example: Almost every time I am trying to do business be it buying milk or more complicated transactions at serious businesses either someone jumps in front of me while I’m waiting or charges up while I’m in the middle of a transaction and just starts telling the person who’s helping me what they want. 9 times out of 10 the clerk will automatically stop helping me and take care of them. To me thats real low class and lately I’ve been speaking up, be it a woman or a man. “hey, you need to wait”. Normally I get “oh que pena contigo”. But people look at me like I’m the bad guy.
Maybe I’m getting old but I follow the rules of human descency, I dont like having to act like an animal at feeding time when trying to do simple business. So, how do you all handle this?”
The responses range from speak up to punch the offender in the face (although I believe that response was a joke). For you Colombians out there, what is your opinion on this? Why does this happen and what how do you react?
If speaking about my own country, well, sure people cut in line in the US but the cultural norm is to speak your mind. What does that accomplish? Either the other person goes to the back of the line or an employee happens to hear the complaint when it happens and speaks to the person who is attempting to cut in line.
As part of the responses and in regards to a sub-story to the story above, one American wrote the following, which I also agree with. “WHERE he has been living is not the point. HOW he has been living is!” In other words, it happens all over the world and it comes down to manners.
“A 77-year-old Colombian farmer who did not graduate from high school has risen over six decades to become one of the world’s leading producers of potatoes. Luis Eduardo Gutierrez, born and raised in the department of Cundinamarca, began growing potatoes at the age of seventeen. By the 1980s he was one of the world’s largest producers of the vegetable, and was dubbed ‘The Potato Czar’.
Of the three million tons of potatoes produced by Colombia each year, 40% come from Cundinamarca, and Gutierrez has played a big part in this, reported newspaper El Tiempo Thursday. In his most profitable years Gutierrez was cultivating some 3,000 hectares of potatoes and today his crops are grown across fifteen municipalities in the department.” – Colombia Reports (more here)
Located in one of the most exclusive areas of the city (the North zone), Parque 93 is the preferred park of Bogotá’s young people. A great variety of restaurants, Internet cafes, bars and ice cream parlors are all concentrated in the area. As many other parks in the city, it offers several cultural events during the course of the year. At night the area is filled with noise and music. Park restaurant menus offer food from all over the world. The park has green areas, native tree species such as urapanes, Sabana rubber trees and palm trees from Quindío; childrens games and a water fountain.
To see a short video of the Christmas decorations, click here.
Location: Calles 93 A to 93 B between Carreras 11A and 13
“A Colombian cooking school has concocted a “love dessert” made with passion fruit — and Viagra. Student chefs at the state culinary school in Quindio province wouldn’t give the complete ingredients but say it contains the active ingredient in Viagra. The pudding-like dessert is garnished with whipped cream and chocolate, and served in a parfait glass.
Sebastian Gomez, one of the creators, says the idea was to reinterpret the blue pill into a new kind of aphrodisiac. Gomez said the recipe describes how much Viagra to safely dissolve into the dessert. The dessert is, of course, not for sale as Viagra is a prescription drug. The students presented the dessert at “Gastronomy 2009″ show in Bogota.” – Source
“Chicamocha National Park (in ES) became Colombia’s most visited attraction according to statistics revealed by the Ministry of Trade and Tourism Monday. According to the Ministry, in the three years since Chicamocha’s opening, the park – located in the department of Santander – has received 978,000 visitors and is expecting to top one million by the end of the year. As a result of these figures the park is preparing to cater for 2010’s influx of tourists, considering that a 30% increase in visitor numbers is expected during the coming new year, reported news site Vanguardia Monday.”
- Colombia Reports (more here)
Last week, I got back from a 10 day trip to Medellín and I’d like to share a few observations about my experience. A few weeks ago, I was reminded of a ticket I had purchased last year to Medellín but didn’t end up taking so instead I paid to keep it as credit for a future flight. Well, the time came and I went, without putting much thought into it at all.
Due to such immediacy, upon arrival I didn’t quite have a clear view of why I was there or of what I was doing, but I went with the flow. During the 10 days, I stayed with a friend in the Centro and proceeded to show myself around town in the days to come. Details such as ‘it’s not vacation for anyone else’ were quickly brought to my attention and in the end, colored my experience of Medellín as a whole. Luckily, I did meet a friend of my friend who had a more liberal schedule and so we hung out quite a bit as the days went on and at this point, I’m pretty sure I could even give walking tours of the City of Eternal Spring…minus Santa Elena, which I didn’t have time for unfortunately.
On to the observations, shall we?
Language
You’re going to hear “pues” all the time, before sentences, after them, and in the middle of them. Sentences you didn’t think could have pues in them, do. There’s a distinct rhythym also of people from Medellín and it’s catchy, after a while you want to speak like they do. It’s kind of low-key and stressed if I had to describe it in some fashion. Another phrase you may very well hear is “que charro” which means that something is funny. Also, parce (for parcero) is used quite a bit. Yet another one is the famous Colombian phrase “que hubo?” for what’s up or what happened, although it seems like one word when pronounced.
Women
The women in Medellín (called paisas) are said to be the most beautiful in Colombia. Perhaps I need to travel a bit more within the country to confirm or deny that but I will tell you this, they are very beautiful. Part of it comes naturally while the other part is cultural. Colombian women, for the most part, will not leave the house without looking put-together (dressed nicely, stylish, perfumed, etc). Some might say that this would mean they are into the phsyical to an extreme degree but after some thinking, I found another way to see it. Perhaps this is just normal to them and not something like “I need to place phsyical appearance above everything else”. Looking good in Colombia is just part of life, like brushing your teeth.
Men
I’m not sure what to say about the men but I can say that there is definitely a style that almost everyone has. This includes a fitted t-shirt with stripes or a funky design on it or both, a mullet hairstyle (often with the sides buzzed) and jeans. The hairstyle though is the most noticable though and I would guess that about 85% of Colombia’s male youth have it.
Transport
Cars don’t follow any rules except to follow no rules. Confusing? Let’s put it this way, if you go to Colombia and try to follow all the rules of the road, you will end up getting others and yourself in an accident. Go with the flow. Buses pretty much follow suit and if you’re lucky enough to take the Circular (I think it’s number 192) into Laureles, you’ll almost be thrown from the bus…so hold on! Also, the bus drivers leave the doors open while they drive, generally before and after stops. What I meant by buses follow suit is I witnessed about three different accidents with the buses I was riding on, where one bus would clip the other, often times taking their side view mirrors clear off. After a very quick chat between drivers, off we went. No matter if it’s a bus or a car or a motorcycle, getting the green light to cross the street doesn’t mean you should nonchalantly cross to the other side. Always be aware of where the cars are around you as a pedestrian. In practice, pedestrians don’t exactly have rights…something I actually prefer in most cases solely because it keeps the city moving as no one is waiting for anyone else.
Food & Drink
Do not miss out on the easy stuff! This includes pandebono, arepas (especially arepas de chocolo con mozzarella), and the buñuelos. They are all fantastic! In the morning, don’t forget that there is always a place on the street for mango slices (although you need to know they usually put salt and lime juice on it). As for drinks, don’t miss the jugo de lulo or the jugo de mora.
Homeless
Different from the homeless in the US, who generally sit on the corner of intersections with a sign asking for change, the homeless in Medellín (and I’m guessing most of Colombia) just lie there on the sidewalk doing absolutely nothing (I noticed the same thing in Brazil). There’s a difference between homeless and poor, is what I’m getting at. The poor people on the other hand are hard-workers and will find any one of a million ways to make a little here and there.
Etc
Something I noticed in many areas of Colombian life is when it comes to purchases, single-serving is very popular. Want to make a phone call? No need to have a cell phone plan, just ask an omnipresent minutes vendor on the street to make a call. Ok, that’s just one example, but I’m blanking on the other ones at the moment. Also, things like riding the metro are simplified economically. One can take the metro from one end of the city to the next and even hop onto the metrocable line up the hillside for the US price of about 65 cents. This is very different from the metros here in the States where you pay the lower price for the lower number of stops but with each extra stop, you pay more. What else? Medellín has quite a lot of plazas and parks and things to do in general for families during leisure time. Speaking of such, museums are pretty much all free, which is great.
If I think of other observations, I’ll be sure to add them to the list. All in all though, I enjoyed my trip and I left with a new appreciation for Medellín and Colombian hospitality.
