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At the bottom of our little mountain in the middle of Bogota, runs Avenida
Suba, a 6 sometimes 8 lane nightmare which for the past 6 months has been being remodelled for a new transmilenio or busway.
Going onto it by bus or car can means hours stuck in traffic. Opposite our mountain is another one, linked by a bridge which
runs through tight little barrio streets steeply down down down to a back road. This back road leads its way beyond the grassy
and treed property of the carabineros or Horse Police to a junction where you can skip a lot of lights and traffic to get
onto the autopistas.
Well at this junction, the People's Hero stands his 10 hour guard - a traffic police officer who
is meticulous in his dress and habits, always on time, incorruptible, ever vigilant and alert to any traffic violation with
his ready pen and fine book, small stocky and I think maybe Cauca. Mr Limpio (Mr Clean), we call him, keeps that junction
clear of the horrid traffic that envelopes it with all those people like us who are trying to get out of the mess on Ave.
Suba above. We think he must be the only hardworking and competent traffic cop out of the some 300,000 of them in Bogota.
We
hadnt seen him for a bit and I imagined he might have been bullied out by
upstarts with new Nazi type uniforms from the
Mayor's office. While he
was away, the traffic was a mess.
Well, yesterday, we spotted him marching down to the
junction. We were
so happy and pulled to the kerb to say hello. Hernan said we missed you
and the traffic has
been a mess without you. Normally very serious, he beamed
from ear to ear, saying he had been on holidays, but now
he was back on
duty. He shook our hands and got back to work. I think we made his day.
Annie shook her head, relieved she hadnt been in the car at the time,
when I told
her, saying, Mum, cops dont have groupies.
I want to put him in a novel. He is one of those characters
that deserves
an entry.
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