Sierra Nevadas del Cocouy... food thoughts, and enchanting those I meet with my art

2013.03.29

Surfing around Couchsurfing.org, I discovered an event posting for backpacking in Sierra Nevadas del Cocouy.  And I signed myself right up, really without knowing any solid details about the trip.  It seemed like a great deal to me... someone else was doing all of the planning, and all I had to do was show up. 

Lorena, the lady I found on Couchsurfing.org who is organizing the trip, is an industrial engineer, and the same age I am. She friendly and funny and sarcastic. She is smart and loves to be in charge and have all of the details at her fingertips but she is also a little insecure and chaotic in a combination that I find instantly endearing. Within moments of walking into her house, I feel like we are friends. She lives with her whole family, which would be weird in the United States, but is totally normal in Colombia – and I find the set-up somewhat enviable, as I begin to see the closeness of family relationships in this country.

Lorena and I both sort ourselves out before heading to the bus station to meet her other two friends – who have also never met each other – for the trip. The bus ride is long and uncomfortable. But we arrive at the town of Cocouy, and track down our guide company just fine.

We are all four of us packed into an SUV for the drive out to the park. A small, thin dude tucks himself into the jump seat behind the back seat without saying much, and we head out down the long, rough road to the park base camp. As we sort ourselves out and head down the trail, the small thin dude turns out to be our guide, Juan Carlos (Juan is a very common name...).

Juan Carlos is average height and thin, and he starts out quiet terse. Clearly it takes him a little time to warm up to people. As we get to know him over two days of following him around the mountain, he opens up a bit and turns out to be funny, intelligent, and full of energy. The sort of dude whose resting state is stillness, like a lizard. But he has infinite stamina and can, at any point, jump into bursts of incredible speed and agility, or sarcasm... He is indigenous, and tells us that he was born in the town of Cocouy. He is fierce, but I imagine him to be a very playful father – we met his wife and one year old son at the house of the guide company before we left town.

The five of us (four tourists and one guide) spend the next two days walking all over the park. The second day JuanCarlos takes us up to The Pulpit, which is a place that is high enough to have snow – very exciting for people who live at the equator. Cocouy is incredible.

On this trip, I opted to bring all of my own food, and not rely at all on the guide company's provided meals. This turned out to be an outstandingly good move. It sometimes boggles my mind how incredibly bad the food is that they served. Breakfast really amounted to fried egg with fried hot dog (salchicha... a signature food). Dinner was a watery potato soup. 

The friends I was with had also brought their own lunches for the trip, white break and canned cream of chicken, some salted peanuts, and sweet things. Ok, the sweet things were Bogadillo, an incredibly tasty red paste made of guava and sugar, often with caramel goo inside... they great. But the other food, I want nothing to do with. I brought a bag of carrots, apples, pears, a quinoa flake & chia seed mix, salami sausage, cheeze, and some fresh hearty greens from the farm I had just been at. Also some sweet corn pancake things from the store.

And I felt so good! While I am currently not in tip-top physical shape (i've been a bit lazy that past few months...), and I'm generally pretty slow walking up hill, I had lots of energy to keep me going throughout the day. David, the one dude in our group of tourists, would charge up the mountain super fast. He is a very athletic dude. But even he would be solidly exhausted by the end of the day when I was still coasting on a nice, even burn.

And so here's the thing... me and my privileged United States self made a point to go out and get the latest, hot-shit health food for this camping trip. Quinoa, chia seeds, and fresh vegetables. And the thing is, people here don't know anything about that. Here in the place where Quiona & chia seeds come from, people don't eat them. They aren't easily available.

At one point as we were stopped for lunch, Joan Carloas mentioned that in the small indigenous community he lives in, in the hills around the town of Cocouy village, they ate a dog. The three city kids I'm with all gasp in horror, while I look at Carlos and nod, thinking “I would eat that, if I was at someone's house and that is what they put on the table...”

Juan Carlos barely eats, and he hardly ever drinks water. His lunch is a large can of sausages, and nothing else. He seems to be the sort of guy I meet often in construction crews, they guy who is lit from fires of energy from within, and just keeps burning, no matter what sort of fuel is thrown in.  He walks up and down a huge mountain, at some of the highest elevations in the world, every day of his life. He is fully adapted to his home climate. And yet, I wonder, what kinds of chronic illnessness exist in his community, from mal (bad) nourtrition. I wonder how these illnesses compare to the illnesses of malnoutrishion in the United States – wherein malnoutrition equals bad noutrition, not just a simple lack of calories.

As I self-rightously congradulate myself on my healthy and delicious food choices (I am most definitely not well adapted to this terrain, and am happy with my normal routine of eating every two hours), I wonder again about the ways in which people are trained to oppress themselves. And I wonder again at the perceived privileges of United States culture.

While we chill out at the lodge in the evenings, I bring out my watercolor paints and try out painting the mountain landscape. I'm not too pleased with my results, but the park staff finds the landscapes of their beloved mountains especially charming. Particularly enthrawled is a 12yo girl named Renee, who I think is helping her mom at the park while she's off from school (this is Holy Week of Easter, a BIG DEAL here...). I lend my paints to Renee on our second day of hiking, and as we set out, she is happily sitting down for a day of ARTING.

At the end of the day (the day we are meant to catch another night but back to Bogota), Juan Carlos takes stock of our walking speed and energy, and suggests that we have him hire some horses to cary our bags back to base camp, and we can take a shortcut route there. Realizing that we, as a group, are pretty slow, and that all three of my Bogota friends need to work in the morning, I go along with this new plan. I check in with JK about how important it is for me to get my paints back from Renee.

This is one of those times when I'm floating along, chaught in the current of momentum of my group. If I had really taken time to check in with myself, I would have easily realized that I wanted to stay at the park for a few days, and keep painting. I would have realized that I really wanted to walk back to the basecamp to see the painints that Renee did with the paints I leant her. I would have realized that all of the park staff really like my paintings and wanted to buy one for themselves, and that I could have had a great experience selling/gifting artwork to the people there...

But on the other hand, my credit cards, which were lost, and where hadn't arrived before I left Bogoto Friday afternoon, were waiting for me at the hostel in Bogota... and the idea of staying in this small town with only the cash available to me in my pocket, while my cards sit on the hostel check-in desk... and not to mention the energy of breaking out of the stream of group momentum... And I didn't stay. I allowed myself to stay in the stream of momentum and be whisked back to Bogota on another overnight bus...And on the other hand, I was rewarded with some incredibly stunning landscape and views to hike through.  

I wished I had stayed in Cocouy for an extra couple days. I wish I had even just walked back to the lodge to see Renee's paintings and give her encouraging words about her art... but I told myself I was Being Responsible by hurring back to get my cards... Also it is EFFING COLD in Cocouy – it doesn't matter how close you are to the equator, when you're at 4,000 meteres, it's damn cold.

And so I left. And as much as I can justify my reasons, I feel like I have unfinished business in the Sierra Nevadas del Cocouy. I feel like I left a piece of my karma there, somehow. I probably won't ever go back... and if I do, I doubt anyone there will remember me. But it's hanting, all the same.

observations of privilege

2013.03

I'm on a bus! A bus from Bogota, heading for Pereira. Because Colombia is really big... it takes a pretty long time to get from one major city to the other. This bus ride is estimated to take 7hrs (but I've heard some people say it might take up to 10 or 11...). On the one hand, sitting on a bus for that long isn't great.

But on the other hand, it's such a great opportunity to do all sorts of things! I have this super laptop here in front of me, with a full battery and no internet connection, so I can write-up this blog post. I also have some pants with me whith a big giant hole in the butt (from sitting on rough rocks while hiking), which need some mending. And plenty more photos to sort through.

Lorena is the lady who posted her backpacking trip on couchsurfing.org, which I got to sign-up for to join her and her friends. I went to hang out with her at her family's house last night, and she filled my mp3 player up with Spanish reggae and ska music (and a little James Brown)!

The on-bus entertainment is a black and white movie from the 50's or something, about Jesus. That's interesting.

Passing through the suburbs of Bogota in this nice [expensive] bus with big huge windows offers me another great opportunity to learn more about this city. Again I'm leaving, but expecting to come back. Next time, I'll get to stay at my friend Lorena's house with her family, instead of in a hostel. And I'll probably get to hang out with Eduin again.

Ok, now for some more general observations about Colombia and my trip...

[sidenote: I'm trying to stop referring to myself, people from the US, or the country I'm from as “America”. Traveling so much in Canada and now South America, I've realized how insanely ego-centric it is for the United States to assume that it's the only really significant country in “America”. America refers to North and South America, and includes at least 20 different counties.]

Colombia is a solidly middle-class country (by United States standards). According to Emilio, one of my fellow US wwoofers at La Juanita, this booming middle class if fueled by selling oil to the United States. Yes there are affluent areas of Colombia, contrasted with areas with more poverty. There are rural farming areas to, and those areas don't necessarily overlap with poverty. And I'm sure that statistics would show a much higher population of poverty in Colombia than in United States, but maybe that is more a matter of perspective, than of “happiness”. One night at the farm, us three US wwoofers were sitting at the dinner table complaining about US healthcare... after enduring this for a bit, Felipe, our Colombian host, interrupted us saying, “you guys need to realize that you have a huge privilege just being able to discuss this. In Colombia, if you get sick, you either have money, or you die. End of story. There is no safety net.” And that was a sobering reminder for me.

In general though, I find much more similarities between Bogota and cities in the United States than differences. Perhaps it's because that's what I expect in some way – I expect that humans all over the world are generally more similar to each other than different. Or perhaps it is because of the pervasiveness of corporate consumer culture. Some of the companies are different here, but the race to have a bigger pile of the correct “stuff” seems very similar. One thing that really surprised me at first, (maybe it shouldn't have, but it did) is that your average Colombian city person is, for the most part, indistinguishable from a North American city person.

What I mean is, people identify with the culture of the conquistadors – not with the culture of the vast and advanced indigenous societies that have been occupied, oppressed, and repressed (Eduin and I had a long and detailed conversation about this concept in particular). This is surprising to me because there is much more integration between the conquistadors and the indigenous communities here than in North America. Maybe it is some racism programmed into me, but part of me is sincerely surprised to see all of these people in Colombia – most of whom are brown and obviously related to at least one indigenous person in the past three or four generations – surprised to realized that all of these brown people identify as white. To me, it seems to shed some light on the way in which people are programmed to oppress themselves... it seems to shed some light on the so-called “privilege” of people in the United States.

One big similarity I see between Colombia and United States is unhealthy diets. Now in Seattle (and most large coastal cities in the US), there is a special culture of healthy eating, a growing fetishization of organic, local, small-scale farming. And I think this is amazing. This culture seems to be just getting started in Bogota, with farmers and community organizers like Felipe, and his friends around Guatavita, and lots and lots of growing urban farms all over Bogota. And in the United States, the “healthy, organic, local” food craze is still a niche market – globally powerful, but niche nonetheless. The vast majority of United States citizens eat a pretty shitty diet, composed mostly of processed fast foods, monoculture potatoes, chemically grown and manufactured corn and wheat products, and waaay too much meat, grown in horrible soul-killing factory farm conditions. Most United States citizens are malnourished (meaning badly nourished, not that they don't get enough calories...). And here, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that malnourishment – the kind that causes mass obeisity – is caused by NOT EATING ENOUGH RAW VEGETABLES.

And the diet of your average Colombian is not much different. But the funny thing is that here in South America, in Colombia, this is the ecosystem of all of the new fancy, hot-shit health foods that many people in the US are now coveting... these health grains, the saviors of the US health food craze, they come from the Andes mountains. And in this case, I find the contrast really obvious, because wheat is, literally, the grain of the conquistadors. The Spaniards forced indigenous farmers to destroy their quinoa and other crops, and replace them with wheat from Europe. According to Felipe, the popularity of these grains in the US market actually creates an opportunity for farmers here to start growing their traditional grains again in an ecologically viable way.

So my point here is not to distort the reality or Colombia culture, or to convince anyone that it is “just like America”. The thing I'm trying to get is poking holes in the delusion that United States is the “wealthiest, more stable place in the world, it's people the best taken care of...” Because I don't think that is true at all. Along with the 'privileges' that being the biggest consumer of material crap in the world bring... is the oppression of being little obedient consumers, always ready to buy the next bullshit that corporations can come up with in order to make a profit. The oppression of being fat and sick because corporations are spending millions of dollars figuring out how to make junk food as addictive as opiate drugs and getting us hooked on them... The privilege of school systems that teach us to be obedient consumers (not empowered community members)

The thing I'm trying to get at feels really resonated by a poem in the book, “The State of North America”, written by a white woman about the betrayal she felt from her own government and culture in it's oppression of indigenous people... the betrayal she felt as a white kids growing up in poverty in the midwest... because the side affect of our “white privilege” seems to be an amputation of our right to belong to the land... amputation of our relationship with nature... we are made to be dependent upon grocery stores and shopping malls. We don't know what plant in our environment are edible or not, and we don't even know how to grow the plants we would buy in the grocery store, because they are grown with huge machines and chemicals and shipped huge distances to be displayed in perfect packaging for someone to buy off the shelf without ever having to think about how it is produced.

And this is a self-replicating system, this de-skilling of the United Stated populace. Because the less knowledge people have about their natural environment, the more dependent they become on buying things in stores.

So what I see in Colombia is a bunch of people who might be judged, by United States standards, as “living in poverty” because their GDP is considerably lower, because their houses are not as big, because they don't have as much disposable cash to buy bullshit. Because the level of gang violence in the country is so much higher, fueled by the US demand for illegal drugs and the US government's efforts to control and suppress those drugs...

But the basic fundamental details of life... I don't find all that much different. Most specifically, I don't think Americans are particularly healthier than Colombians. I do think that eating shitty diets of processed, chemical food is the way that people, all people of every economic status, have been trained to oppress themselves. The option of choosing to spend more money on “healthy” food, on vegetables, is definitely a privilege of wealth. But done right, by focusing on locally grown food, strong community networks, fairly traded international foods, eating well and healthy is also a protest against occupation and oppression. It's standing up and asserting your sovereignty, and your right to have a relationship with the land and with your community. And it doesn't have to be a privildege of wealth... ideally that's the whole point – figuring out how to make locally grown food more economically viable, because the reality is that it is more efficient!

Ok, so this blog post got away from descriptions of my trip, and into a bit of diatribe about my opinions on American culture... but that is also sort of the point of my trip, eh? Gaining perspective on my home with the fresh viewpoint of experiencing another place.