23, September 2008
By Joshua Halinen
Being alone in Colombia is a nerve-racking thing at times. I arrived in Bogota 2 days ago very excited, but once the taxi driver dropped me off a block from my destination, the United Church of Bogota, he pointed me in the wrong direction. The horror stories from friends and family began to re-enter my memory. Sweat formed all over my body. With a 50-liter pack on my back and a large duffle bag thrown over my shoulder, I was drenched within 5 minutes in the cool weather.
After about 10 minutes of wandering I began to ask everyone, well not everyone, I avoided the people who looked at me like I was a crisp one hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk, but I asked everyone else where the United Church of Bogota was. Which consisted of me pointing to the name of the church and the address directly below.
United Church of Bogota
Carera 4, #69
I became frustrated when each person I asked pointed me in another direction. The air was getting cold, my cough was getting worse, and my forehead burned. It didn't help that the little Spanish I learned in high school and college wasn't coming back to me. I recalled sitting in high school classes just before the teacher handed out a test. They'd say, "if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself." Now as far as other subjects go, I'm not sure that even to this day I believe them. However, at that moment I knew my Spanish teacher was telling the truth. Unfortunately, back then I didn't know I would travel South America alone.
The last man I asked, who looked to be a guard, I chose one of the few without a machine gun, responded to what I pointed at by asking, "hotel?" and after I answered "no" several times I don't know what else to say. Then he asked "iglesia?" I suddenly felt stupid for not saying that earlier. It was a word I knew. I took Spanish at both a christian high school and college, but it was only bits of Japanese and Finish that came to me. Even when I thanked him I nearly said, "kiitos" before I said "gracias." To my pleasant surprise I was only a 20 second walk to the church, which the guard was happy to walk me too.
The first day I was still riding the high of being in a new country to do what I'd been waiting to do for so long, to write. But the next couple of days I began to feel sick. And it wasn't the traveler's diarrhea I got from drinking the tap water. It was the feeling of being alone on a continent where I couldn't communicate what I needed to. It was that and the fact that the FARC and the guerillas were ambushing policia in the hills and bombing busses. It was nice to know that Colombia had lost it's trophy for having the most kidnappings to Iraq, but I was skeptical that Colombia's kidnappings had actually gone down. I though it more likely that Iraq's amount of kidnappings had just gone up. These among other reasons were what kept me indoors most of the first few days of my trip. Sure, I could think positively and say, "out of all the gringos in Colombia it would be unlikely that I'd be chosen to kidnap" but then I thought, "well how many other gringos have I seen?" However, I think the most frightening thing to me was what Pastor Box, a long term missionary to Colombia and the pastor of the United Church of Bogota, told me when I first arrived. He told me about a type of drug thieves use in order to rob people. The drug is a powder that they simply blow or throw in your face. Once breathed, the victim is hypnotized to do whatever they say. Usually they simply suggest to the victim that they should go to an ATM and empty their account. The rest is self-explanatory. My six-month trip through South America turned into six days in Bogota. So advice to those who want to travel South America, if you don't speak the language, don't go alone. And to 'he that hath an ear, let him hear' the warnings of lady wisdom.
