Alive and Weird

My name is Drew Jenson. Mike Sack has asked me to write this blog on behalf of our combined experience over the past 2 weeks or so. Perhaps this will provide another window for you to peer into the goings-on of his present reality in Sudamerica. I was first introduced to Mike Sack a little over one year ago. On or around my 25th birthday, our paths crossed in a small train station in Ibague, Colombia. I had arrived in Colombia only a few days prior. Ive come from New York City for a 15 day expatriation in search of knowledge and a piece of understanding about myself and the world south of our version of America. I was in search of all things alive and weird. Mike Sack, with his own chosen verbiage, path, and time line, was in search of very similar things.



Mutually realizing the inherent benefits of the situation and the possibilities that lay before us, Mike Sack and I quickly became primos ¨cousins¨ and started laying down daily methods to support our symbiotic idealism. The first of which was to realize that being self-less is a positive and active way to be a good citizen. We also decided that while traveling, we were not normal citizens. There is an underlying understanding that a main objective of our experience was to personally embrace and take away for ourselves knowledge, experience, and understanding. THEN...Hopefully we will be good citizens and bring that back...



We were staying with a friend Id met in Chicago whose name is Andrea Giron Molina. We stayed with her at another Colombian Andrea´s apartment, who will be known to us as Dos. Dos was a great host and also an intense addition to the mix. A nice girl, but when the time comes to attack, even playfully, she is well known to go straight for the jugular. For example, I was greeted promptly with a fresh breakfast in the morning. Don't say you can't eat tomatoes... or the subtle thunder becomes, ¨you dont like my cooking? do you know where you are going to sleep tonight?¨ and some pretty constant, although possibly well-intended and in-your-face correction of our Spanish. All in all, all things were great once we got beyond their idiosyncratic nature and Dos has a huge heart.



We were watching some television with both Andreas and something about FARC taking American hostages came on... both Andreas smiled at me and maybe even did some dance to get my attention off the screen. Then, when Mike Sack and I set off to take a run, we were told not 'to talk to strangers or go where we didnt know.





Within five minutes we'd met an Elderly guy named Jose, who we did not know, and who led us on a run on some dodgey path in the pseudo-jungle towards an amazing and slightly hidden botanical garden. As he left us there, potentially for dead, we decided to take advantage of life and get weird. We must have ran for about an hour there before deciding to go back to the Apartment and get whisked away to part 2 of the longest day ever. La Familia.



La Familia was this huge Colombian family that we only knew because Dos taught English to one of their children. Before long Mike Sack and I turned into the central focus of a large group of children who wanted to know everything they could about these mysterious ¨gringos¨. We were this weird electric ball of light that La Familia, maybe 7 children, wanted to put their respective fingers on. As we left that evening, they were throwing us email addresses, phone numbers, and names scratched onto any little piece of paper they could scrounge. Further, they were hanging onto our pant legs all the way out of the gates of the neighborhood. Something like in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is in India (?) and gets the onslaught of loyal child-fans.



It was apparent, for the sake of keeping things weird, that we take our thoughts on the road. We set off soon for a questionable trip to Cali. Id met this really nice girl on an airplane to Munich who just so happened to have moved back from Europe just days before we were to arrive. She seemed real excited to have us and show us her city. I'm not quite sure how happy her boyfriend and family were who, unbeknown to me, she had to lie to and explain how we didn't just meet on a plane, but rather years ago in the states and RANDOMLY again on a plan in Spain last summer. YEP. Did I mention we accidentally arrived on Valentines Day? Things were yet again about to get weird.



Natalia was her name, and she is a really nice person. We were staying in her huge luxury apartment in Cali. She told me not to worry about her little lie concerning how we knew each other. So I didn't.





At least not until her boyfriend asked me point-blank about 30 minutes later with her parents in the immediate next room ¨How do you know Naty?¨. He first asked in Spanish and I tried to fumble around and sort of smudge the issue. Then both Javier and Mike were getting confused and saying ¨you can answer in English¨, to which of course I replied ¨Que?¨. The interrogation probably lasted a solid four and a half minutes; one continuous cycle of Q & A.





Javier: ¨How do you know Naty?¨





Drew: ¨Que?¨





He finally relented.





I quickly went to the room after the conversation and tried to document the situation. Later at dinner, Javier asked ¨what were you writing in your journal¨. The issue sort of fizzled out, but Mike Sack, up for all things weird, was sporting the smile of champion that things were starting right off the bat. Needless to say, the journal was buried deep in the hiking pack only to be excavated outside of the city limits of Cali.



Like I said, Natalia was cool with everything. Principally because it was her idea to support this plan in the first place. And her weird and contrived lie to begin with. Things got funny when she had to go to class and took Sack and I to the ¨country club¨... Lets try and get some sun, sleep, and start fresh.





Thinking about a funny conversation with the locals about what to avoid in Cali, I remember Mike Sack randomly throwing out ¨Ok. So I see a Tonka Truck, 3 guys on Motorcycles and I do what?¨


Mike Sack and I kick a mean conversation in Spanglish.




Anyway... back to the country club. I woke up from a nap to notice a few bites on my persons. I looked over at mike and saw that there was something of an INFESTATION on his body. Without noticing anything out of the ordinary at the pool... our situation quickly changed form as we realized that we had BED BUGS.



I think we had about 1.5 hours until Natalia was to pick us up. Every single minute of which was spent stressing out about where they might have come from and how we could continue our trip without destroying South America with them. We nearly managed to convince ourselves we were in the midst of spreading a dangerous and possibly deadly epidemic of some sort.





After deliberating over every possible way to break the news, we decided to be honest and tell Naty when she came that we had to wash, burn, or otherwise cleanse all of our belongings of potential nocturnal pests. We were fully prepared to leave that day and not cause any more problems. Natalia came, with her boyfriend, and the awkwardness continued. When we finally started to tell her our situation, she looked at the bites and assured us that they were just some bug that chills by the pool and attacks in mass. From our near-tragic social calamity we were spared and thus born again on our continued weirdness. However weird this sounded, we were down with it. Javier later helped to confirm this reality of the "insectos de la piscina". WE DID NOT HAVE BED BUGS.






The rest of the trip went pretty smooth. We danced Salsa, Mike and I cooked some of my Thai Curry as a gift for the hospitality, and we spoke about renewable energy, bio-fuels, and Brazil with Natalia's father. We walked away appreciating the hospitality, but always realizing that we were not at home there. Its not that they were not nice people. It just seemed that our impact, or the impact we received, was quiet at best. We knew that our lifestyle was not very understood in this ambient... in this environment. And that its hard to penetrate such an established and private reality.

Moving back to Ibague in a rain storm, we were happy yet again to be on the road. We had a fun last night there and a good trip to a farm in the mountains on our way back to Bogotá. Bogotá was the center of life, as far as I am concerned, in Colombia. Che Guevara had documented the tension and air of revolution, but I think it was far from bleak. The people there truly touched my heart. I left before Mike Sack and when we saw each other again we met at my favorite dingy bar in Bogotá. This bacano little spot, operated by Ritchie, where you could pretty much control the music and everyone knew everyone (+ soccer on the TV non-stop, so in those long Spanish tirades i could space out into something great) The whole week, we couldn't pass this spot without walking in, even if not to drink, and giving Ritchie a hug. And nobody ever passed by without walking in.

Bogotá. Huge amounts of love in this city. Maybe it bit more personal for me, and not to waste your time on. We knew, through Andrea, a very special group of people here. We continued to eat amazing, home cooked meals. Fresh juice. Panela and Hot Water. We climbed Mt Serrate. We looked back. We looked forward. We found beauty and understanding. We prepared, yet again, the Thai Curry special... which took me about 10 hours in total to find ingredients around downtown Bogotá (including learning how to make coconut milk)... and somehow, during its consumption, with the family of Bethsabe (the beautiful), there was NWA playing in the dining room (?). AWESOME. WEIRD. And up to the last day... we still got hit in the jugular by the raw and potent talk of "Dos". We left in a blurred whirlwind on February 24th. I'll never forget this amazing journey, Mike Sack, Bethsabe, Andreas (3), Ritchie, Mario, Joanna, Natalias (3?), Jose, La Familia, and the people of Colombia. Pues... Marica. We're Alive. And Weird.

PEACE


(que mas mike sack?)

gracias, drew. pretty accurate recap, friend. addition; bogota gets very, very cold at night when you have no place to sleep.

I am alive, and drew...well, drew is most definitely wierd. also, capilene underwear is the best thing ever invented. stay tuned...

be good,
michael

smack and slug juice

its 4:30 in the morning and eddie glasgow is telling us about the time he was holed up in a hotel room in india for 2 weeks chasing the dragon.

you take the tin foil. you sprinkle the sstuff on the tin foil. you cook the stuff. you suck in the fleeing smoke. you chase the dragon.

smoke heroin. smack, he calls it.

rounding out the circle are jenny adelaide, eddie and beck melbourne, daren south london and myself. the conversation takes a hard turn from hard drugs to world politics. i fear my worldly ignorance will be exposed. glasgow is in ireland, right?

as the roosters begin to call, the stories are making their way around the circle like pieces of challah at passover. eddie mistakes heroin for cocaine in cambodia. eddie and beck are in a disasterous car crash in bolivia. daren sees a pub patron´s cheek "glassed" off over a football argument in london. i am courted by a gay man in medellin. jenny likes to salsa.

if i had known anything about salento before my arrival and had made a list of things to do and see, it would look something like this,

hike through wax palm tree forest - check
visit hummingbird park - check
tour coffee plantations - check
get blitzkrieged off colombian beer and aguardiente - checkcheckcheckcheck

and so, with an extra day to kill in this sleepy town of 3,500, there is one thing left to do.

nothing.

and it is glorious.

the hostel i´m staying at is buried in the corner of town on the edge of nowhere. in the center of the crab grass ridden backyard there lies a treadless dunlop with my name on it. buena vista. between the bushes and beyond the stripped wood, tin roofed shack, the forest green tree lined mountains are peeking their heads. i reach out to touch them, but they are hundreds of miles away. and soon enough, the cool light breeze pushes everything to black and i am inside my mind.

i dream about speaking a dozen languages. about ¨making a difference in the world.¨ about making change. about changing nothing.

about running a dirty little bar. about owning a record store. about pickled herring and smoked salmon. about running away. about staying put. about why a british accent sounds so much cooler than mine.

i dream about what my father and my grandfathers dreamed about long ago. my thoughts float back home, wondering what everyone else is doing right now. what they are dreaming about.

what´s next? what do i want to happen next? where is the next escape? everybody has a hungry hear...shit.

i´ve been listening to too much bruce springsteen.

as i´m becoming comfortable with the notion that some dreams are to be snatched from above our heads and some are for safekeeping in a fantasy netherworld, the little shack comes back into focus. there is a slug on my shoe.

when i pack my things i see the little critter has left a trail of salento slime across my bag and half of my clothes. i pass on the laundry and gladly accept the parting gift.

no, mom, i did not chase the dragon.

and we DID sterolize the needles.

be good,
michael

the barranquilla follies, mona's birthday and other short stories

can you think of the last time a stranger asked you for help? do you remember what you said?

sitting next to luis on the overnight bus to medellin, not yet knowing his name, i am silent. it has been three or four days since i have spoken to anyone - a real conversation, anyway. and i am waiting for the hum of the engine, the crank of the gears, to shift into background noise to sing me to sleep.

early in the day, i took a bus from cartagena to barranquilla for the much hyped and highly touted carnaval. a five day celebration of music and dancing throughout the streets of the city. i am supposed to meet the guys from santa marta here tomorrow. or the next day. i'm not sure. i have no idea how we will meet up. while contemplating how it is i am going to find them, i am interrupted by the bus stopping short of its terminal destination. so, there i am, in nowhere, barranquilla, unsure of what the hell i am doing. with stone rubble filled streets and dozens of buses flying by en route to who knows where, i am forced to seek help.

i test out my spanish on the first person i see; a teenage kid hanging on the street. we hardly understand each other. rather, i hardly understand him. they speak very, very fast on the coast in colombia. he tells me his name at least 9 times. still, now, i have no idea what it was. we'll call him the dude.

the dude gathers i am a tourist in town for carnaval and an ignorant one at that. i gather nothing, but he begins walking, elbow bent and hand winding for me to follow.

why not?

we arrive at his house, doubling as his father's convenience store. when i encountered the dude, he was dressed in fraying shorts and t-shirt, dirt brown cap and thong sandals. now, after offering me coca-cola, yuca and fish that looked as though it was pulled out of the magdalena river 2 minutes ago, the dude is transforming into the dudette; blow drying his hair, applying facial cream after changing into tight jeans, a pink london exchange t-shirt, pumas and two giant diamonds in his ears. before beginning every sentence, he tightens the ends of his mouth and smacks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. he tells me he will accompany me into town, help me get situated.

five hours of miscommunication later, we are in a taxi, the dude returning to his burroughs, and me to the bus terminal. all of the hotels were either run down shit holes, overpriced or full. i have comprehended one of every one hundred words coming from the dude, given up hope of finding my amigos and just want to get the hell out. F the festivities. when the dude gets out at his stop, i thank him for everything and tell him i'm sorry for the trouble. he is pissed and mumbles, "claaaro." "of course" and returns home.

as our bus pulls away, the people are gathering in the streets and the party is beginning. i cannot sleep. aside from the fact that i am not tired, the guy next to me on the bus is a big, big boy, and stretch space is limited. i ask him what his story is to help pass the time. his name is luis, he is 23 and is on leave from work for his once a month visit to wife and baby. his spanish is clear and he also speaks a little english. the knot in my chest loosens a bit. finally, a breakthrough. we talk about medellin, its beauty, how much we both love food, how his english sucks, how my spanish sucks and where he would go if he could go anywhere in the world. he chose alberta, canada. really??

i am wearing shorts, t-shirt and sandals, and the buses here BLAST the air conditioning. luis sees my teeth slamming together like they are connected to a motor.

"are you cold? here, take this."

and i am an honorary member of the colombian division of caterpillar machine technicians. in the middle of the night, luis nudges my shoulder to move aside. it's his stop. he tells me to keep the shirt and leaves his telephone number in case i need anything in medellin.

the next time my eyes open, i am at the medellin northern bus terminal. i needn't mess with another bus or the taxis, as medellin has a well designed and efficient metro system. i get off at only what i assume to be the stop nearest the hostel i am looking for. with address in hand, i ask a random middle aged woman on the street where "this" address is.

rocio asks nearly every damn person we pass how to get to the hostel and walks me all the way there. she tells me to drop my things because she is going to show me around. we pick up another hosteller for the trip. she takes us to her apartment, feeds us a snack. takes us to her niece's house to meet her niece. takes us around the neighborhood to see where the restaurants are. no doubt she would have held my hand the entire day if she did not have a meeting with a friend a couple of hours later. she leaves me with another telephone number to call, just in case.

that evening, sitting on the steps of the catedral de metropolitana, i am watching the monthly flea market fold up as dusk sets in. a guy next to me asks me something, but i don't quite understand his spanish. i ask him if he speaks english and to my surprise, he does. him and his buddy both teach english, one at the university and one at a high school. javier and antonio.

they offer to take me out to dinner for a plato tipico of medellin. uh, hell yes, please. beans, rice, fried egg, steak, tomato, and a giant avocado. i forget the name of it now, but it was AMAZING. i am invited to javier's apartment to hang and listen to music. i know none of the artists they like and relishing the opportunity to collect some new music.

javier: "have you heard of this one?"

me: "no."

javier: "how about this one?"

me: "no."

javier: "HEELLLLOO. ohmygod. what do they listen to on jupiter?"

awkwardness rears its head again when antonio accidentally pops up the download program with "men at play," a 45 minute gay porn downloading and quickly closes it. oooooooh dear.

javier asks if i want to stay the night. not so much. i awkwardly make it over abundantly clear that i like the dames.

me: "yeah, i have a girlfriend back home. like 3...7, actually. yep. love girls. love 'em..."

while i fumble my words and act like an idiot, javier handles it like a champion and calls me a taxi back to my hostel. before leaving, he invites me on a minitour of the city the next day and to celebrate their friend, mona's, birthday up in the mountains of santa elena.

why not?

hell of a time. the minitour included visits inside the cathedral (boasting the most bricks of any basilica in the world; 1.2 million or something like that) and the cemetary of san pedro, a 165 year old burial ground, displaying beautiful statues and mausoleums. however, my favorite part of the day, was the trip to santa elena.

mona is celebrating her 53rd birthday. mona lives by herself, choosing life away from the hectic chaos of the city, making stained glass pieces as her trade. we are about 2400m above medellin, surrounded by peace. celebrating with her are javier, antonio, antonio's mother, sister, brother and sister-in-law. oh, and me. we were there for three hours or so and i may have said fifty words, tops. but they embraced me like family, walking me through the woods to the mountain top for a bird's eye view of medellin, feeding me pastries and coffee and hot chocolate, playing dice and card games for pocket change.

antonio pulls me aside every now and again, pointing to a tiny dot in medellin, saying in his high nasally tone, "myyykoooool, come here. do you see that?..." and goes on to explain a part of medellin history that i will only vaguely remember.

when they play, they scream and yell and laugh with eruption. with their whole bodies. even when i don't know what's going on, i do the same. its contagious. i leave with a hung and kiss from the whole family as well as the birthday girl, herself.

aside from javier's attempts to gay me up a little, mostly in jest, i couldn't have planned those couple of days better. not only did i get to see sides of the city and country i would have never found on my own, i made a couple of new friends and got to work on my spanish with the two tutors that would have been worth an endless amount of money per hour.

i venture off on my own the next day, to see what this paragliding is all about. apparently, medellin is the place to do it in colombia, being breeding grounds for extremely high winds as the city is buried in a valley below the mountains.

if you get a chance to go paragliding, DO IT! high in the mountains again, about 2300m up, i don't even have time to think how high i am before the wind snatches my tandem flyer, felipe, and I into it's grasp. i am overly fearful of heights, but for some reason i am completely at ease floating thousands of feet above the ground. almost too much at ease.

me: "felipe, are we going to go down more?" i just want something to get a little more movement going.

he responds with something that sounds like maneuvers.

me: "SIIII!"

oh god.

my stomach flies somewhere toward santa elena while felipe rips us left, right, down, upside down....

felipe: "otra vez?" again?

me: "yeeeeeeeep."

before i was able to have a 2300m spew, the ride is over and we are landing softly on the mountain side.

i am headed to salento, coffee country, this morning to go hammocking and do nothing but drink cafe con leche for the next couple of days until my body tremors out of existence.

i have been overwhelmed by the friendliness and hospitality of the people here. i tried to explain to javier and antonio how these things would rarely happen in the states, but it became this tangled and insensible diatribe about national paranoia and terrorism. what the hell was i talking about?

am i wrong though? is this common place in the states? and if not, why not?

in other news, i had my first solid bowel movement in 8 days this morning. happy super tuesday, yeah?

also, something has been bugging me the past few days and i have not been able to get the answer. there is an old and rare looney tunes episode in which the road runner and speedy gonzalez face off in a foot race. do you remember that one? WHO THE HELL WON THAT RACE?! don't ask me why or how this came up. i have no idea.

be good,
michael