La Laguna
This weekend it was Cali’s 400 and something birthday and the city has been in celebration. Saturday I had been ill from the food at the Asamblea por la Paz the week before but on Sunday I was up when the phone rang at 7am. It was colleague from work who I had recently got to know in discussions of what to do about his nephew who, after trying to get married in the UK has been imprisoned under new immigration law. He and his family invited me on a outing to the natural baths near Buenaventura.
The area is one of, if not the richest areas in the world for fresh water deposits with huge underground reserves making the region hot property for multinationals and increasingly dangerous territory for local residents who have witnessed its gradual [para - and National army] militarisation. Natural springs, streams and rivers emerge from every conceivable crevice below the canopy of rich jungle quenching its thirst. The streams are generally too small to swim in save for the odd waterfall drop pool and the main river too shallow. As such residents have made small dams and natural swimming pools fed at one end by the stream and emptying back into it at the other with no need for chemicals since the water is constantly moving. Being a bank holiday the pools were teaming with families bathing and relaxing in the surrounding restaurants. We moved on from the largest one where we arrived and down the road a little to a smaller pool with one other family and a basic restaurant where we bathed while doing shots of Aguardiente - a perhaps non advisable but widely practised custom so rude not to partake. Lunch consisted of fish soup with coconut milk, fried fish, rice and fried plantain cooked outside on the fire. Delicious. I like doing stuff with families, on top of being fun, getting fed and usually rather pissed you get to experience a side of the culture invisible just by working with people or hanging around with friends.
To further remedy the dodgy stomach of Saturday, on bank holiday Monday I picked up my food basket and made a potent chile with the fresh produce interspersed with reading on the back patio. In the evening I had been invited to a meeting by the friend from the food project. I headed over to his house and we got a taxi towards the North Eastern edge the city, to the Aguablanca area where I had visited the education project but to a different section: Comuna 13 the largest of the neighbourhoods in Cali’s marginalised illegal outer settlement which as a whole is home to a quarter of the city’s 4 million population. The taxi stopped outside an already immense modern church currently in the process of enlargement. It was packed with people and flooding the street with light making a striking impact in an area where public street lighing is minimal if existent at all. The taxi driver refused to go any further for personal security and road condition so we got out and walked along the wide potholed dirt road separating the dense blocks of makeshift housing on either side. The atmosphere was animated, not a door is shut and people sitting outside talking, or tending the small fires which burn everywhere, the smell of burning plastics masking that of the decaying refuse and poor sewerage.
My friend is greeted in the street by many people, others shout or wave from their positions outside their homes. As we walk on the road becomes a narrow track and then opens out onto two dust football pitches positioned end to end. The standard of play is phenomenal, beautiful even to a non fanatic, a feverish pace and power combined with a delicate finesse. The football pitches are situated on a strip of wasteland separating the bulk of the neighbourhood from a sunken boggy lagoon, La Laguna el Pondaje. On the banks of the Lagoon are makeshift dwellings which make the destitute neighbourhood on the other side of the football pitch look like Sloane Square. Houses are constructed from waste materials on land which is sinking into the swamp. For sheer lack of alternative parts of the Lagoon which is largely dry at this time of year have been filled in with waste bricks, rocks and sand to create space for the expanding population fed by forced rural displacement and urban poverty.
The local authorities have declared that the lagoon which functions a balancing lake for the rivers Lili and Cañaveralejo is in danger from the illegal settlement and as such that within the next thirty days the some 1000 families inhabiting it shall be evicted by police and military force if necessary. While the eviction order is crystal clear there is no plan for the relocation of the residents which obviously in view of the inhuman conditions in which they have been living for the past four years have no alternative residence. In light of this threat a demonstration is planned for the 14th of this month. With enough people it should be peaceful with too few the police will be relentless. The meeting we were going to was to mobilise people for the march and was held outside and standing up for lack of a roof or seats. It was electrifying and sincere its participants impassioned by necessity but few in number. There is promise but no room for complacency.
Looking out over the Lagoon I could see my own neighbourhood nestling above the city at the feet of the imposing mountains, its glistening street lights like out of reach jewels. From the other direction, from the safety of my local park adorned with food and music, the Lagoon and its inhabitants are not visible. It is a marginal zone out of sight and mind for the majority. It bears some resemblance to the one way glass separating the global north from the south. Our riches are quite visible, the dazzling stars of Hollywood recognised globally but the other audience is largely invisible, out of sight out of mind.
Leaving the Lagoon and heading towards the church where I had been dropped off we were encountered by a torrent of people filling the street and flowing against us and back to their homes. “Now this is a march” I commented to my friend, “imagine if we got this many people on the 14th!”. He chuckled and I asked him where they were all coming from.
“The Church” he replied.
The area is one of, if not the richest areas in the world for fresh water deposits with huge underground reserves making the region hot property for multinationals and increasingly dangerous territory for local residents who have witnessed its gradual [para - and National army] militarisation. Natural springs, streams and rivers emerge from every conceivable crevice below the canopy of rich jungle quenching its thirst. The streams are generally too small to swim in save for the odd waterfall drop pool and the main river too shallow. As such residents have made small dams and natural swimming pools fed at one end by the stream and emptying back into it at the other with no need for chemicals since the water is constantly moving. Being a bank holiday the pools were teaming with families bathing and relaxing in the surrounding restaurants. We moved on from the largest one where we arrived and down the road a little to a smaller pool with one other family and a basic restaurant where we bathed while doing shots of Aguardiente - a perhaps non advisable but widely practised custom so rude not to partake. Lunch consisted of fish soup with coconut milk, fried fish, rice and fried plantain cooked outside on the fire. Delicious. I like doing stuff with families, on top of being fun, getting fed and usually rather pissed you get to experience a side of the culture invisible just by working with people or hanging around with friends.
To further remedy the dodgy stomach of Saturday, on bank holiday Monday I picked up my food basket and made a potent chile with the fresh produce interspersed with reading on the back patio. In the evening I had been invited to a meeting by the friend from the food project. I headed over to his house and we got a taxi towards the North Eastern edge the city, to the Aguablanca area where I had visited the education project but to a different section: Comuna 13 the largest of the neighbourhoods in Cali’s marginalised illegal outer settlement which as a whole is home to a quarter of the city’s 4 million population. The taxi stopped outside an already immense modern church currently in the process of enlargement. It was packed with people and flooding the street with light making a striking impact in an area where public street lighing is minimal if existent at all. The taxi driver refused to go any further for personal security and road condition so we got out and walked along the wide potholed dirt road separating the dense blocks of makeshift housing on either side. The atmosphere was animated, not a door is shut and people sitting outside talking, or tending the small fires which burn everywhere, the smell of burning plastics masking that of the decaying refuse and poor sewerage.
My friend is greeted in the street by many people, others shout or wave from their positions outside their homes. As we walk on the road becomes a narrow track and then opens out onto two dust football pitches positioned end to end. The standard of play is phenomenal, beautiful even to a non fanatic, a feverish pace and power combined with a delicate finesse. The football pitches are situated on a strip of wasteland separating the bulk of the neighbourhood from a sunken boggy lagoon, La Laguna el Pondaje. On the banks of the Lagoon are makeshift dwellings which make the destitute neighbourhood on the other side of the football pitch look like Sloane Square. Houses are constructed from waste materials on land which is sinking into the swamp. For sheer lack of alternative parts of the Lagoon which is largely dry at this time of year have been filled in with waste bricks, rocks and sand to create space for the expanding population fed by forced rural displacement and urban poverty.
The local authorities have declared that the lagoon which functions a balancing lake for the rivers Lili and Cañaveralejo is in danger from the illegal settlement and as such that within the next thirty days the some 1000 families inhabiting it shall be evicted by police and military force if necessary. While the eviction order is crystal clear there is no plan for the relocation of the residents which obviously in view of the inhuman conditions in which they have been living for the past four years have no alternative residence. In light of this threat a demonstration is planned for the 14th of this month. With enough people it should be peaceful with too few the police will be relentless. The meeting we were going to was to mobilise people for the march and was held outside and standing up for lack of a roof or seats. It was electrifying and sincere its participants impassioned by necessity but few in number. There is promise but no room for complacency.
Looking out over the Lagoon I could see my own neighbourhood nestling above the city at the feet of the imposing mountains, its glistening street lights like out of reach jewels. From the other direction, from the safety of my local park adorned with food and music, the Lagoon and its inhabitants are not visible. It is a marginal zone out of sight and mind for the majority. It bears some resemblance to the one way glass separating the global north from the south. Our riches are quite visible, the dazzling stars of Hollywood recognised globally but the other audience is largely invisible, out of sight out of mind.
Leaving the Lagoon and heading towards the church where I had been dropped off we were encountered by a torrent of people filling the street and flowing against us and back to their homes. “Now this is a march” I commented to my friend, “imagine if we got this many people on the 14th!”. He chuckled and I asked him where they were all coming from.
“The Church” he replied.
