We had been in Bogota (and South America, for that matter)
just long enough to set our things down in our room when I bumped into Sandra,
a petit Colombian, 22 years of age, staying in the same room as us. She was
jumpy, fidgety, and quickly apologized rapid fire in every language she could
think of (I think I even caught Swahili). She was shy at first but once I asked
her where she was from, she started shooting out rapid streams of consciousness
in Spanish, how she was from Bogota, liked the cold, wanted to party tonight,
and hoped I could join her at a house party. I expressed an affirmative
interest and then she told me she worked tonight at the hostel, and that she
would take us out at 12 (It was 9 or so).
Sandra’s job at the hostel is difficult to specify. It
didn’t seem to be as much ‘work’ as ‘requirement of presence.’ She sometimes
tended the bar, which was more along the lines of choosing songs off the bar
laptop and occasionally handing a beer to someone; while the bar did serve
mixed drinks, the backpacking gringo crowd were not exactly big spenders and
most opted to hang out in the bar with their own bottle of aguardiente (a licorice
flavored, 30% ABV liquor, usually ingested in shots—think watered down Sambuca),
purchased at the store for the price of one or two cocktails at the bar.
Furthermore, during her ‘working hours’ she would frequently leave the bar un(wo)manned
to go and prepare herself for partying after work… make-up, trying on of
multiple outfits, and so on and so forth.
We passed the time playing foosball and drinking and
mingling with the Scots and the Irish and the Germans and the Aussies and the
Brits and the Americans that had been trouncing about Latin America for varying
durations of time. It sometimes seems not as important what you do but where you
go with the gringo crowd. They would comment on their inability to do
activities because of financial reasons while drinking, smoking, and snorting 4
to 6 nights a week (hmmm).
When the clock struck 12, Sandra’s requirement of presence
was no longer present, and she came up to us frantic. In rapid fire Spanish she
spout off something along the lines of a house party conflicting with a drum
and bass party, and now everyone there is totally wasted and she doesn’t know
shit about what’s going on and who’s doing it and where it’s at and that she
needed to make more phone calls and to wait where we were. From across the
room, people would probably think that Sandra was speaking of life or death
matters, or starring in an action movie, but really it was a choice of which
party to go to. After pacing and calling and swearing for a few more minutes,
she seemed to have given up and walked over to us.
“Smoweed?”
Huh? We all asked.
“Smo-weed?”
Puzzled looks.
“Smo-weed, you know, SMOKE… WEED?”
Oh yeah, sure we all said in our own form or fashion.
She hurried us into the bathroom, despite the fact that
there was no hurry. The shared bathroom in the 10 bed dorm that Sandra slept in
was, for all intents and purposes, Sandra’s bathroom. Hairsprays, q tips,
brushes, and other beauty and hygienic products lined the sink, so that there
wasn’t even enough bathroom real estate to set your toothbrush down. We used
her Postobon©
plastic bottle bong and she nervously packed more and more pot into the bowl
piece and insisted we continued smoking. Despite the crispy, dark green and
brown appearance, this stuff was the real deal, as evidenced by the giggling
fit that ensued. Sandra’s laugh was like saying ‘head’, but without the ‘d’,
and in a very shrill voice, usually in bursts of 3 (try it now if you can, it’s
fun; be sure to add some nasal in it). This laugh would incite my baritone ‘huh
huh’ laugh, which would incite Jack’s tenor chuckles and Fatimah’s soprano
cackles. A symphony of laughter.
It seemed the night was going well, but Sandra still wanted
to go to the drum and bass party or a party of some sort. She would call
someone and this would make her seemingly more nervous, and she would smoke
more, and this went on for an hour or so. We tapped out after the first or
second round, but she endured the ankle-lock Mary Jane had on her brain and
kept coming for more. Before we knew it, it was 2 and we all had intense
munchies. She took us about 10 blocks away to get us some tasty street meat
treats: well-seasoned shredded pork with a glob of mayonnaise wrapped in thin
corn dough and deep fried. Upon having street meat treats, I’m always shocked
people aren’t dropping off of heart attacks at 19 in Latin America. We stopped
at a bar or two to give the food some alcohol to soak up, and then decided to
head back to the hostel.
We were walking and joking when we hear BAM BAM BAM. Okay,
it was all good I told myself. BAM BAM, at this point Sandra started running
and whimpering, and motioned for us to follow her. BAM BAM BAM BAM. The sounds
were clearly a gun fight, going on one block over from us. Shit. The first
hostel that Sandra banged on the door of didn’t answer. Shit. We were going to
have to go down the road to another hostel, en route we would have to pass a
cross street where the gunners could possibly see us. Shit. The second hostel
had someone (wo)manning the desk—a plump older Colombian woman with playful curly
dyed hair. Sandra, as frantic as ever, described our plight. The woman laughed
and invited us in. It was at this time that I realized this was really going on and looked to Fatimah
for her thoughts. She was speechless and, for lack of better words, freaked the
fuck out. Heavy breathing, constricted pupils, shocked look, the whole 9 yards.
Another staff member or two came into the common area and the story was retold
to them. They laughed and got us tea. Fatimah was still, for the most part, out
of it. She was frantically saying ‘I want to stay here, I will pay, I don’t
care, call the police’ in rapid succession. Jack, Sandra, and I were a little
shook up—don’t get me wrong—but Fatimah was out of it. The hostel called the
police and they showed up a few minutes later. After acting calmly and not
treating a gunfight like a big deal we ended up getting a ride home from them
in their riot proof cop-van (saving at least 2000 pesos on a cab, or roughly a
buck).
While I have been in a few sketchy situations abroad, a
gunfight down the road was not on my list of experiences. Furthermore, this was
Jack and Fatimah’s first night abroad… A pretty action packed ‘Welcome to the
developing world my friends!’ I would say.
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