Finding Angeles de Medellin
I sleep with my door to the balcony open — the breeze blowing west from the Andes. The food aromas linger all night, drifting up, filling my entire apartment with paella Valenciana, gazpacho, and the sweetness of churros.
The voices and the timbre of aluminum pans and forks scraping across plates from the restaurant below eventually fade, yet the scooters and car alarms buzz all night up and down Carrera 2 Circular.
Occasionally, a drunken stray voice sings under my patio until he’s stumbles further down the street.
Happy in my paradise
and revealing
Miracles on every floor
Charm
Charm
Colombia, I love you so mucha
At sunrise, the horizon prisms into an amalgam of red and purple and yellow — the haze of the night sky clouds fades into the Andes shadow like wisps of silk.
I wake with the rainforest parrots squeaking in the banyan trees outside my window. I’ve learned that Red-Lorded Parrots fly in pairs, and like geese, are monogamous and breed for life. As I look into the azure morning dawn, pairs of them — always pairs — swim across the sky, cackling and spinning their intricate heads, making certain the others follow in line.
Even in the uchuva trees they tend to each other, their stark, green feathered bodies hopping together from branch to branch as though synchronized, one with an uchuva berry wedged in its beak selflessly passing it to his mate, then hinging his head back and bristling in joy.
I walk Carrera Circular 2 north at seven, watching the vendors open their food carts and clothing shops, restaurants, and cafes. The food carts sit in a median or on a sidewalk, the sleepy-eyed vendors carefully setting the apples and oranges and papayas on fragile wooden shelves as dogs sleep below the wheel bins or at their feet.
It’s humid, like sticky rice, the air heavy and fragrant, yet filled with fumes from rowdy scooters zipping by. A fixture in South America — more scooters exist than cars — each one has two passengers and a large, oversized box sits behind them.
They are couriers of food and merchandise and car parts or construction, and as one pulls up and stops, the rear passenger hops off to deliver the goods. It’s rapid fire, a 24/7 operation that only ceases for a few hours of the morning.
At night, the bikers huddle in front of shops, their bulky helmets dotting the pavement like chess pawns, in a mass circle of scooter gangs, waiting for the next delivery. They pace and look at their phones and I realize that many of the passengers are young women. When they dismount and remove their bulky helmets, long, black, shiny hair splays to their shoulders.
I’m conscious of the history of violence this city has. It’s difficult to believe that his beautiful city was once the cocaine capital of the world under drug lord Pablo Escobar and that its nickname was Murder Capital of the World. Yet I refuse to accept paranoia or fear.
Still. Last night, as I walked in the rain, a lone biker on a green neon motorcycle with a matching green outfit called out as he passed. “Americano! Yeee!” He glared at me as he spun off. Was it menacing? I didn’t know. But perhaps they have marked me and I make a note of it.
When I walk, I’m conscious of anyone walking behind me. I’ll stop on a corner and step aside and allow them to pass. I listen for the rattle of motorbikes, and keep eyes in six directions. I wear cargo pants with many hidden, secure pockets. My wallet clip and phone are in my front pocket and my backpack is snug close to my body. If they wanted something from me, they’d have to take me with them.
At night, the restaurants and cafes are full of lights and elaborate fixtures, converted into intimate cubby holes with bamboo walls and dim candlelight, yet in the morning everything’s sealed with steel doors and cages, the patios swept clean of tables and chairs and merchandise. It’s as though every molecule were just a movie set, a Barbie playhouse folded up like a cardboard box. It’s a silent ghost town in the morning, a surreal visage of what lined the streets yesterday.
The street narrows as you walk north towards the mountains — the houses becoming more eclectic and whimsical. The beveled sidewalks are full of holes, mostly open water drains missing lids.
From cement to colorful ceramic tile the path changes with each step, the textures blending with the stucco houses and shops rolling like an ocean wave, dipping steeply into a driveway then jutting up to a ledge of Spanish tiles you must climb, then dip down again into a crevice. Hidden underground garages sit under houses and fancy cars suddenly appear from within.
Tiles and pavement fold into crumbled pieces from enormous banyan tree roots. Garbage is strewn about on corners and human bodies, the homeless, lie in dark corners wrapped in blankets or sift through trash cans. One man lies in a fetal position against a garage door.
If once I could escape the homelessness in any city I visit, it would only be a dream, and that dream is not in Medellin or any other city. It exists as a profoundly sad human experience in any city, a suffering that we must bear, and I am reminded of my charity work back home.
It settles me somehow, this knowing, even though I knew that poverty exists beyond my home, after all I’ve seen it in plenty of global cities I’ve spent time in, that the issue is not limited to the responsibility of my city, that somehow what we’re doing in Atlanta is something substantial, and that alas, it remains a global plight.
For now, I have reached my destination, Angeles de Medellin. The local charity serves the city with meals for elder communities, school supplies for children, and to help ensure that small villages outside of Medellin have toys for children and clean drinking water.
And this is my whisper for the day.
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