a jungle trek, politics and the lost city

this summer, i went on a trek to the ciudad perdida, the lost city.  this ancient ruin was one of the first things that caught my eye when i started reading up on colombia.  a mysterious city, deep in the colombian jungle, lost to the outside world for hundreds of years--it quite intrigued me.  it was built around 500 BC by the tyronna indians, but relatively little is known about it because the political volatility in the area has restricted archaeological investigations.  so when i had a few weeks off of school for summer break, i packed up my pack and headed off to the costal city of santa marta. 

santa marta is similar in some ways to cartagena, but a good deal grittier and less touristy.  the fierce heat was glorious after six months in frigid grey bogotá.  i stayed at a nice little hostel and met up with some british and irish girls who were also going on the 5-day hike.  the next day we headed out into the jungle.

the trek was, frankly, a lot more difficult than i'd expected.  i knew we'd be hiking for about 6 hours a day, but i thought "enh, that's like walking all day.  no problemo."  but wrong.  i didn't think about the fact that hiking along ridiculously rough terrain, in 90° heat, dizzy from altitude, with 30lb. of gear on your back, might be a little more difficult.  and 6 months of bogotá´s ravishment of my lungs did me no favors on the trek.  so it was a good physical challenge, shall we say.

the lost city, and the jungle surrounding it, has only recently become [relatively] safe for tourists, especially americans.  this is because the climate and soil are perfect for the cultivation of coca, and the dense and nearly impassible jungle are a favored hideout of the FARC, other rebel groups, and the paramilitaries.  harsh eradication efforts and a major deployment of military personnel into the area have greatly diminished the presence of coca and guerrillas, at least in the immediate vicinity of the lost city.  although even in the height of the danger and instability, guides told hikers that everything was perfectly safe.  i was glad for this honest admission from our guide, who has been leading treks for decades, though it did not make me feel especially confident in his assurances that things were perfectly safe now.  i felt even less secure--and lets be honest, more enticed--when he continued his tale.

The hostages (R) and guerrillas (L) after their release.

in 2003, one of his treks didn't quite go as planned.  he explained that he was leading a group of 15 hikers, including Israelis, German, Spanish, and British fellows.  they broke camp one night, and while they slept ELN (leftist National Liberation Army) rebels surrounded the camp and attacked.  the guerrillas kidnapped 8 of the hikers, those deemed most physically fit and thus the best hostage candidates.  they left the rest of the hikers tied up, and force-marched the 8 captives through the jungle to various guerrilla camps, evading the pursuing colombian military for months until a settlement was reached.  the objective of the kidnapping--initially thought to be financial, getting ransom to finance their struggle against the government, turned out to be purely political, trying to get prisoner swaps, and more international attention for their cause.

Some of the hostages after their release

the thing that really bothered me was how our guide reacted to the kidnapping.  now, i know that it's a super stressful situation, but basically when the rebels attacked, our guide just peaced out and left the poor backpackers to fend for themselves.  he said he was scared, and that he was kind of embarrassed that the media was painting him as a hero when he actually just ran away.  it takes guts to admit that... but still.  i mean, he had a responsibility for these people, some of them were just kids, students younger than my little sister.  they probably weren't all fluent in spanish, didn't know what was going on, had been told things were safe, really... could have used some support.  i later found out though, that there was more to the story.  (there always is).  the main reason he peaced was that he had ties to the paramilitaries.  so he thought (probably with reason) that once this was inevitably discovered he would be killed, not just kidnapped.  ok valid, but these are my questions:

a) why do you have ties to the paramilitaries, why would anyone have ties to the paramilitaries, they're horrible and way worse than the rebels?
b) why were you endangering yourself and others by wandering around rebel-infested jungles when you knew these ties might get discovered?
c) after all of this, why are you still a tour guide here?  and, what was of more immediate concern to me--do you still maintain these paramilitary ties?  how well-known are they?  do i need to be concerned about them as you lead me blindly deep into the mountains?

well, as you probably guessed, i did not get kidnapped on the trek.  but i still find it ironic that... of all the tour companies, of all the guides, i happened upon this one.  figures.

i had the best spanish of the group, and i was interested in hearing local perspectives on the issues, so sometimes i'd walk alongside our guide and talk with him about politics.  i was absolutely shocked to find that, when i mentioned Plan Colombia, he actually strongly supported it!  plan colombia was a US initiative in the late 1990s aimed at curbing the drug trade.  although the initial proposal took a holistic approach to ending the conflict and the drug trade, including economic and social programs to get at the root of the problem, all this was scrapped in favor of a heavy-handed militaristic approach to 'fighting' the 'war' on drugs.  many people, myslef included, feel that the final plan colombia was The Worst Plan Ever, as i argue here, mainly because it ignored the root causes of the problem, contributed to further human rights abuses by strengthening the military and paramilitary forces, destroyed legitimate crops along with coca through aerial fumigation, pushing more people into coca cultivation or guerrilla involvement through economic pressures, hurt the health of the peasants, and generally just made the already-marginalized peasants hate the government, military, and their US allies even more.  

but he said that, for him personally, plan colombia helped.  increased military support led to more deployment of troops in the northern jungles, which eventually led to greater tourism in the area.  (after the kidnapping incident, treks were banned for a few years, but eventually the area was re-opened along with heavy army escort.)  and his paramilitary buddies benefited a lot--financially, materially, politically--from the policy as well.  "but what about the farmers?" i asked.  "for me, the plan was good," he said carefully.  i guess that's all you can ask--during war, people just try to get by, and you really can't fault them for taking a personal perspective on policies, instead of looking at them holistically, when the issues touch them so deeply on a personal level.


speaking of policies which touch people on a personal level, the people probably most touched by the government's tourism policies in the area are the indigenous kogis.  and though they benefit in some small ways--for example, when we passed one of their villages, our gide gave them a loaf of bread--i think they are largely hurt by tourism in the area.  some say that the lost city was never really lost to them, just set aside.  but now when they petition the government to use the ritual site of their ancestors, they are denied because this would force them to close down the park for a time and hurt toursim.  it is definitely the (non-indigenous) tourist companies in santa marta, and not the descendants of those who built the city, who gain from the growing international popularity of the site.  [making the hike on your own is illegal, it is required that you hire a tour company]  interestingly, one of the goals of the ELN kidnappers in the 2003 incident was to raise awareness of government marginalization of indigenous people in the area.

we passed some kogi children on the trail--they were small, barefoot, quiet and dark eyed.  their round bellies protruded beneath their loose, stained white tunics, and coppery streaks of malnutrition stained their long black hair.  because of the near-impassibility of the terrain, access to services like school and healthcare is extremely limited, i was told.  but the sad thing is that "preserving" the kogis in their "pre-columbian state" has become part of the attraction of the lost city itself.  i even saw "visit a traditional kogi village" listed as an attraction on a tourist brochure for the lost city.  of course they have a right to continue their lifestyle and culture as they always have, if they want.  but there seems to be--particularly in the case of the government's neglect--almost a policy of intentional "preservation," and i'm not sure if that's what the kogis want, particularly as someone else is profiting.  i think if the tourist companies worked more with the kogis, did more to give back to their communities, and maybe even were run by the indigenous people themselves, then a lot of these problems could be improved.

anyway, enough about the history and politics.  on to the expedition itself!  the landscape was incredible--dense forest, churning rivers, steep mountains, incredible waterfalls.  there was not a lot of wildlife, but the scenery made up for it.  it varied greatly with the wildly changing altitude along the trail.  we passed trees that were a thousand years old--i could hardly wrap my mind around that fact.  a pre-Columbian Colombian tree; just think about all that it's seen, how much has changed--and hasn't--over the course of its vast sylvan lifespan.

in places there were enormous trees swathed in vines, elsewhere the plants had wide tropical fronds, and in certain places it was grassy and almost sparse by comparison.  the rivers were swollen with this year's heavy rains, and the current was vicious; the week before a hiker had been swept away by a sudden surge in the river during one of the numerous crossings and died.  so we held on all the tighter to one another's hands, forming a human chain as we crossed, fighting the current together.  at one point we had to cross a gorge on little wooden box (although as it didn't really have sides, it was more of a platform than a box, about a meter square) suspended from a cable.  i felt rather like greg mortenson, and as the platform swung and jolted as a local 10-year-old worked the pulley system on the other side, i longed for a korphe-esque bridge.  and the waterfalls!  there really is nothing quite like jumping off a waterfall, i highly recommend it.  the rush, the relief, the freedom, the wildness of it.  they were probably the best part of the trip.  [*photo--we all went swimming in these ritual pools just outside of the Lost City.  they were once used in the ceremonies for which people gathered in the city.  they're supposed to be a sort of colombian fountain of youth, so i guess we're all immortal now.  maybe that's how we all made it back (relatively) unscathed, jaja!]

the lost city itself was incredible, but as everyone says it was really about the journey.  we were all elated to have made it there, and it was all rather unreal.  it still seemed like we were  walking through a whispered legend, that day was so far removed from our normal reality.  most of the artefacts have been lost, but the raised stone platforms that formed the bases of the buildings remained, as did the long steep stone staircase leading from the river to the lower tier of buildings, and the stone pathways connecting various parts of the city.  it is incredible that, without much more than the strength of their own hands, thousands of years ago these people were able to transport all this stone to the very top of the mountain to construct this giant city.  it made me feel a little foolish for complaining about the weight of my pack--though stuffed with water, wet clothes, soap, and a hefty first aid kit, i'm sure it weighed far less than even the smallest of their sacks of stones.

it's unfortunate, but still very little is known about their culture and history.  the city was not 'discovered' until the 1970's, and political conditions in this area have been no picnic between then and now.  especially after the hikers' kidnapping, external organizations were reluctant to invest resources and people in the area to find out more.  because of this, tourism is not yet very lucrative here, so investment is not attractive to private organizations.  pretty much the only organization in a position to invest resources for further archaeological study is the colombian government, and they're busy focusing their attentions on chasing down the rebels (and anyone else that opposes them), not to mention they don't even have enough cash to supply their schools with textbooks.  so, así es, and the guides were stuck saying "well, this area was probably for the richer people or priests, because it's better constructed.  and these might once have been houses, or maybe temples, we're not really sure..."

i have probably never looked worse, and never cared less about that fact--by the end of the day all of us were filthy, covered in mud and blood, reeking, ruddy, wild-haired, and drenched in sweat (and i do not use that word lightly, we looked like we'd just jumped in the river and were literally wringing the sweat out of our shirts, hair, shorts, and pack straps).  so we girls were a little surprised at all the attention we were getting from the hordes of colombian soldiers stationed at the summit of the city, the famous multi-tired platforms with the incredible view of the surrounding jungle. at one point, our guide and the few males in our group had somehow disappeared, and we found ourselves--a handful of young white(ish) girls, sweaty and in short shorts and wet tank tops--alone in a little cluster surrounded by a circle of at least 30 colombian soldiers, all clutching machine guns and staring at us silently and intently.  i guess being isolated on the top of a mountain for months on end lowers one's standards.

scrambling up endless switchbacks for hours on end, often almost on hands and knees, climbing over boulders, balancing on a knife's edge--a few inches of trail between sheer cliffs, fording engorged rivers known to sweep hikers away, sliding down mountainsides snatching at tree branches to keep from a free-fall, tightropeing along fallen trees to cross rivers and gorges--it all made for quite a bonding experience.  we all had close calls, and were constantly catching one another and warning each other about unstable ground and slick rocks.  i asked our guide what would happen if one of us got hurt--really hurt-- on the trail.  "well the terrain is too mountainous for a helicopter to land--the only place one could would be at the summit of the lost city itself, so you'd have to make it there regardless.  we could maybe strap you to a donkey, but it would still be a few days before you could receive any medical attention."  so essentially we were on our own--but at least we had each other.  so when one of the brits fell and twisted her ankle with a sickening crunch, we all chipped in, helping her bandage the rapidly swelling and purpling limb, carrying her pack, loading her up with painkillers, taking her hand to help her over the roughest parts of the trail to relieve some of the weight on that leg.  everyone got sick from the water save me and the two british girls, because we'd been in colombia for a long while and our stomachs were hardier from exposure to questionable water.  so we shared out whatever medicines we had, and divvied out the contents of the sickest ones' packs so they'd have an easier time of it that day.

at the end of the day it was absolutely heavenly to strip and jump in the icy river and scrub off the worst of the day's sweat and grime.  to guzzle as much iodine-treated riverwater as we could to replace all we'd sweat out, collapse on a wooden bench and load up on a giant plate of rice and beans.  despite the heaviness of our packs, someone managed to smuggle some rum on the trip, and we drank it in a delightful cocktail of river water, chemical treatment pellets, and knockoff koolaid in plastic tumblers as we talked and played cards into the night.  the rush of the stillness of the camp was like a runner's high, but compounded a dozenfold by the length of our exertion and the adrenaline rush of the day's danger.  and i have never slept so soundly as i did in those hammocks, despite their wretched smell, the omnipresent bugs, and the foul mosquito nets draped over our faces.  we looked like wobbly bananas hanging in a tight row under the roofs of the pavilions.  pretty soon after sunset we always crashed and slept like logs until sunrise, when we were up again wolfing down water and carbs, tending to the wounds on our legs and feet, and heading off again.

on our final night, our guide acquired us some local tea, and we shared it late into the night, telling stories and talking about all manner of things as we let candle after candle burn low and disappear.  it was so cozy, despite the lack of walls, sitting gathered around that little wooden table in that pool of light--the only that could be seen, save for the stars, in the deep wilderness that surrounded us.  it really is amazing how close a group of people can become in such a short period of time through shared experiences.  and how very similar people from such diverse backgrounds--brits, colombians, irish, kiwis, americans, and mexicans--really are.

random p.s. one of the boys kidnapped in the 2003 incident, a 19-year-old british fellow who ironically shares my surname (matthew scott), later escaped from the forced march by jumping off a cliff into the river during a rainstorm; the guerrillas probably thought he died.  after wandering through the jungle for almost 2 weeks, he was rescued by some indigenous villagers.  the others were gradually released, after much international negotiation and political concessions, over the next 3-4 months.  one of the hostages later made a documentary about it, 'my kidnapper.'  i haven't seen it, but it looks pretty interesting: 

p.p.s.  sadly my camera was stolen a few days after i returned, before i'd had a chance to copy over any of my pictures, so all the photos here are stolen from my friends' facebooks, or just the general internet.

Guest Post: Education in Colombia

One of my friends, who is also an English teacher in Colombia, visited my school last week and posted about her visit on her blog, The Wanderlust Chronicles.

So last week I went to school with one of my gringa friends who is a teacher here in Bogotá. She is here through a program called World Teach, which is a program that places you in a country and you teach English at a school that would not normally have the funding for English teachers and they give you a small stipend to live on. If you know what Teach for America is, it is essentially TFA but in a foreign country.

The school she teaches at is in the far south of Bogotá, which is the area of the city at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Most classes are between 35-45 students, which is a lot for a teacher to handle. She teaches English to the fourth and fifth graders; they were all really sweet kids…although one did ask if I was my friend’s mother (we are the same age).

One of the most interesting things I found out about the school, and the way most schools in the south of Bogotá work, is that there are two school sessions per day—one from 6 am to noon, and the other from noon to 6 pm. That’s how they handle the huge number of students attending public schools; if not, classes could have up to 90 or 100 students in them, which would be next to impossible and would not facilitate learning. It seems to me to be a pretty good system for coping with the lack of space and teachers, although a major downside to this schedule is that some kids who walk to and from school either have to wake up insanely early or go home really late, and it’s not always safe.

An unusual event occurred while I was observing one of my friend’s classes. She was in the middle of teaching and a man walked in. The head teacher lined up the students in turns, whilst the lesson was still going on, and each student received a tiny plastic cup. The man squirted something into the cups, the children drank it, and then sat back down. I was perplexed and trying to figure out if it was medicine or what that they were receiving, and my friend explained that every once in a while on random occasions, the Ministry of Health sends people to public schools to give the kids iron and other nutritional supplements. I have no idea about the long-term effectiveness of this endeavor, but it seems like a great idea to me.

Another great thing I noticed while at the school was that the kids receive a healthy snack, generally consisting of a sandwich, some sort of fruit, and juice, provided by some division of the government. They are given such a snack every single day, and apparently it happens in most of the public schools here. It’s very important because many of the kids might not be eating a whole lot or eating that healthy at home.

As for the overall quality of the teaching and education in public schools, according to some public school teachers I have talked to, some teachers simply don’t teach and just pass the kids along because it’s just a paycheck to them and they are not held to any standards. I certainly do not want to bash Colombian public school teachers, and I’m sure there are plenty of excellent ones, but my friend told me how she has seen some teachers just sitting and reading to pass class time because there are no consequences for them. Most of the teachers have no incentive to discipline or try to teach their kids, which means the kids aren’t learning, and many don’t see the point of learning.

Most schools in this area of town are public, and there is a huge difference between public schools in Colombia and public schools in the States. In the States, most people go to public school, and there are many excellent public schools. In Colombia, however, if you want a really good education, you generally have to go to a private school. Many private schools here are bilingual—they teach most classes in English or sometimes German or French—but there are private Spanish-only schools as well. The majority of the population attends public schools, but sadly the education system is neither well-funded nor well-regulated, and therefore the education of the majority suffers. Here, private schools are businesses, so in order to get your money, they have higher standards; in order to be able to get a good education, you have to pay.

Colombia is by no means the only country that needs serious overhaul on education. Many schools, teachers, and students are suffering in the States as well. Recently in Colombia there have been protests nearly everyday concerning higher education and the government’s policies. It is clear to everyone that transformations need to be in the entire education system, from primary to university, and while nothing has happened yet, at least people are talking about and demanding changes from the government, so I am hopeful.

Rescuing books from the trash in Bogotá

Cross-posted from the Idealist.org blog.  Quite relevant, considering the dearth of textbooks at my school.  I think the fact that a lot of kids at public schools don't have access to a single textbook, while rich Colombians are throwing away books (a sacrilegious act in and of itself in my bibliophilic mindset), says a lot about the staggering inequality in Colombian society. 

How one man’s idea to rescue books from the trash contributed to everyday life in Bogotá.     By Putnam Barber, July 7, 2011

Recently my colleague Elena interviewed José Alberto about his success in recycling books for schoolkids in Bogotá, Colombia. (You can read her original post in Spanish at Idealistas.org.)

In his work as a trash hauler, José Alberto observed usable books discarded by households throughout the city.

He knew that children in the low-income neighborhood near his home had difficulty getting the books they needed for their school work, there was no bookstore nearby, and the nearest library was a long way away.

So fifteen years ago, he decided to rescue them and make them available to the kids in his neighborhood. Starting in the ground floor of his own home, he has expanded the network of bibliotecas into eight neighborhoods of the city. As word of his project has spread, more and more Bogoteños donate used books directly to him, avoiding the detour into a waste bin.

Elena says that José’s entire family has been involved in this never-ending project for 15 years now: “They don’t have a car or even a little motorbike, and frequently they cross the city after somebody’s call to pick up boxes of books that then they carry in buses all across the city.” By opening his own home as a place to find books, José Alberto started something that has changed the lives of thousands of children (and their parents) in Bogotá.