The streets are busy, as they always are. From Juan Valdez Coffee on the third floor I watch people below slide across the concrete, following imaginary routes written into the stone. A huge boulevard with trees so tall I cannot see the tops of them splits the road in two, dividing the mostly yellow line of taxis moving through the veins of Bogota and to its beating heart La Candelaria. If Zona Rosa is the brain, the central thinking hub of business for the city, La Candelaria, with its old buildings, strong culture, history, and narrow streets keeps the rest of the body alive.
Bogota is a sprawling, diverse city that grew faster than its own skin. The transversal streets and other diagonal roads cutting through the grid are the stretch marks. Colombia has the greatest number of internal displaced citizens out of any country. The violent, destructive behavior of the Narcos forced people out of the country and into Bogota.
They pile into the city, 9 million of them, building as far as the eye can see from the top of Montserrate , and spilling onto the sides of the surrounding mountains themselves. These displaced bring the hope of a better life, an honest life.
By many standards Colombia is a poor country. But money is a relative thing, as the value of currency lies on what you can get. Here, in Bogota, hundreds of miles from the humid coastal cities and their beautiful beaches, you can find anything. Bogota is a melting pot, an answer to those who want to leave behind evil, but not their homelands.
Still, what makes people stay in a broken, but slowly recovering country, when there are so many safer places to go? This is a universal question. What makes women stay with abusers? What makes alcoholics work in a bar? The question is the same: what makes people endure a bad situation when all that is required is change?
It’s Monday today and the traffic has settled down a bit. This weekend cars packed themselves tight into the streets like tic tacs in a container, and a smog settled into the city. Bogota is crowded. So much so that the government implemented something called Piko Plaque. They limit driving during the week to curb traffic. On certain days only vehicles with odd or even ending license plate numbers can drive. As time continues the problem will get worse. In many ways we are all just working towards our own destruction.
This isn’t out intention, only the tragic result of our ignorance. We don’t know how to stop time. We don’t know how to curb growth. How can you? Curbing growth at this point means killing people by limiting resources to the point where we become sustainable as a civilization. We don’t know what to do. So we continue moving, because if humans know of anything it is how to get back up, it is how to continue living when shit hits the fan. Which is the tragedy. Our strength creates overcrowding, it creates the piko plaque.
A few days ago the city got too much so I went in to the sky. I hiked up Montserrate, climbing the steps one by one to the top. The uphill was two hours of lunges. 1,500 feet, 500 meters, of leg burning lunges.
There are many ways to the top. Some take the Teleferica, cable car. Others walk. Some run. We saw one man who did a sort of dance, bouncing two or three times on each step and whistling to himself like a cho cho train. Some even crawl up the steps on their knees as an extreme form of penance.
It is quiet up here. The city sprawls below. Bright flowers grow beside the statue of Jesus getting nailed to a cross. Behind him the hillside drops into a valley that rises again to another mountain in the distance.
A cross gushes water into a 17 foot wide basin, which drops water into another, and another, and another, and so on. Finally after six basins large rocks stop the water flow. Beyond that is a wishing well. I wonder if the water drops down into the bottom of the well? Maybe it continues on, unseen, but there. Eroding and changing the world.
From the cafe I see the street lights turn red. A line of taxis slam on their brakes, and their car hoods dip towards the concrete. Beautiful people glide across the long street. Some run. They move down side streets, turn different directions, and vanish from view. Like all of us, they move, they make the best of their situation, and they live the best possible lives.
When we find ourselves surrounded by bad circumstances on one side, and the impassable barrier of death on the other, we keep moving. Some travel to large cities like Bogota for safety in numbers, and others simply pick up and travel to a different part of the world. But, whatever choice is made, we all have the fight for a better tomorrow.