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IWD is always a big thing here. Unfortunately with the new socialist
mayor
there are no more free buses nor curfew
for the night. But there are
free
concerts around the city for women. Personally I am waiting for two
students
to turn up. These girls turn up when they please and talk too much
throughout but they pay so who cares? I constantly
tell them learning
is not
my responsibility but theirs. Most of my students are just gorgeous.
They
tell me everything. I think I am more of a counsellor than teacher.
The news here is that most of the countryside outside
Bogota is
inundated
badly and thousands have lost their homes. Several private and
government
groups help
out but it is on such enormous scale that it might just be
impossible. It rains here every afternoon like clockwork, heavily,
a
bit
like babinda nat and jen! Annie and I put our faces into it, joking
that we
are getting the acid
treatment. Takes years off your face!
We are all fine. Hernan has a bad back, working too much. I have been
getting
acupuncture and am really feeling fab again. Annie is just
fine. We
all survive the 4am rise to get all of us to work
and Annie to her
school
bus.
As for the violence, it continues and the FARc are on the rise again.
Especially
in the southern states. Recent murders of 8 families
(Indigenous
members of a peace community) has caused some outrage.
At the end of
last
year some 200,000 Indigenous peoples marched from the north coast to
Bogota,
covering some
2000kms, to beg for peace on their lands, to beg the FARC
and
paramilitaries to stop killing them. NOBODY in the international
press
covered this remarkable event, except a Swiss channel.
Gustavo, Hernans brother, a doctor in the jungles of the
south, came
back to
Bog recently with Dengue. The mozzie net has to be one of the best
inventions in the world.
Pataroyo was the Colombian inventor of a
synthetic
vaccine for malaria in the 1970s but because the government stopped
his
funding, he sold his ideas to Spain. Now Spain is looking to release it
within 5 years. What a miracle it will
perform.
So - snippets from around the traps.
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