Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 7: Especial Colombia!

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Colombia, with two O's and no U

Playlist:
1. “Calle 19” - La Mojarra Eléctrica - www.myspace.com/lamojarraelectrica (Spanish only)
2. “El Mapalé” - artist unknown
3. “Somos Pacífico” - Choc Quib Town - www.chocquibtown.com/english.html

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - www.negesfoundation.org

Official Colombia Travel Website - www.colombia.travel/en/
Cartagena Tourism - www.turismocartagenadeindias.com/ingles/es/general.htm
Bogotá Tourism - english.bogotaturismo.gov.co
Cali es Turismo (Spanish only) - www.caliturismo.com
Medellín Tourist Guide - www.guiaturisticademedellin.com/index.php?lang=en
San Andres and Providencia - www.sanandres.gov.co/turismo/home.php

AIRES (Spanish only) - www.aires.aero
Avianca - www.avianca.com
Continental Airlines - www.continental.com
Delta Air Lines - www.delta.com
JetBlue Airways - www.jetblue.com
Spirit Airlines - www.spiritair.com
Copa Airlines - www.copaair.com
LAN Airlines - www.lan.com
TACA Airlines - www.taca.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

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Keepin' It Sassy

Austin, Texas might get all the hollers from mainstream media, but I think it's that other college town and Southern state capital a few hundred miles down I-10 East that speaks surprisingly to all-inclusive diversity and the rack of artistic expressions, cultural encounters, and eating options that entails. No, this ain't your granny's Tallahassee.

Nestled amongst the red clay hills, moss, and magnolias of North Florida, Tally indeed reminds folks that it was "the only Confedrit capital east of the Mis'sippi not captured by Yankee fawces during the waw of Nawthun aggression." And while the atmosphere is still not exactly "We Are the World," the city's third black mayor currently holds sway over politically blue territory in a decidedly red region of the country, while students, alumni, and faculty of (my alma mater) Florida A&M University continue making socioeconomic headway at a percentage unmatched anywhere else in the state. Adding to the mix is a burgeoning Latino and Asian student population, especially at Florida State University, and many young people unaffiliated with government or university who've visited, liked, and stayed, and who've carved a niche of professionals and bohemians that have, in turn, spawned an explosion of alternative activities to traditional Homecoming games and massive barbecues (not poo-pooing either, mind you).

• If you're in town on the first Friday of the month, head to the aptly-named First Fridays at Railroad Square, a gathering of eclectic visual and musical artists showcasing their wares among off-price wine and grilled snacks. I bought a t-shirt with an outline of Florida and the tagline, "No Other State Has Sunshine."


• From now through March 23rd, Black art collectors Bernard and Shirley Kinsey display paintings and historical documents, including a hilarious Dear John letter from Zora Neale Hurston, at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science. The exhibition goes to the Smithsonian when it leaves Tallahassee.


• Next week, hit FSU's 7 Days of Opening Nights, wait til March for Handel's "Xerxes" at the Florida State Opera, or swing down in the fall and rattle to FAMU's Marching 100 at one of the football games.


• Saturday afternoon, stroll through the mangrove forest at the Tallahassee Museum and watch the black bears and Florida panthers frolic with man-sized yarn balls, or soak up the silence in Princess Murat's modest plantation house. Saturday night, get yo salsa on at Atlantis Bar and Grill or have a drinky-poo in the lobby of the Aloft Hotel (a much more welcoming atmosphere than at the Hotel Duval down the street).


• Skip Chik-fil-A and TGI Friday's. Head for Super Perros for Colombian fast food, Bahn Thai for (you guessed it), Uptown Cafe for the hot pulled pork, The Black Bean for comida cubana, and Bird's (Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack) for the nominal oysters or the baddest-ass hamburger in the Lower 48.

Tally-ho!

Thanks, John and Nina, for the bomb Super Bowl weekend!

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Re-post: Missing Middle Florida

I haven't been on vacation in Florida with my entire family since the mid-90s, and spending this Christmas with them in Orlando brings back and brings up all sorts of memories and madness. Back in March, while still living in Colombia, a bout of homesickness caused me to pen an homage to my home state, a celebration of both the geographic and temporal location that serves as my cultural foundation. Being back home, I find these same sentiments echoed in family conversations and collective memory, in spite of mindless sprawl and cultural homoginization, increased population and pervasive plasticity of modern Florida. For new readers, I hope you find this post enlightening and entertaining. For long-time readers, I hope this re-post is just as engrossing as you originally found it (well, assuming you found it engrossing, originally :-)

Happy Holidays to all the Fly Folk out there. Thank you for reading.

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Missing Middle Florida
(Originally posted March 10, 2009)

There's the moonlight and magnolias of the North, the kid-centered wonders of Central, and the tropical swing of the South - the geographic regions of the state of Florida. Then there are the temporal zones: the Old Florida of Osceola and Andrew Jackson, of Saint Augustine and the Confederacy, of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The New Florida of Walt Disney and Jeb Bush, of Little Haiti and Little Havana, of Spring Break and Dave Barry. And I grew up somewhere in between, a native Floridian born to native Floridians, who have a connection to the peninsula, know all the secret places, and how to get everywhere in the state without once climbing on one of those new-fangled interstates. I'm from Middle Florida.

Being born at the tail end of the 70s means my memory only extends as far back as 1980, a time of transition for my home state. Since the late 19th century, hell, since the 15th century when Juan Ponce de Leon named the place for the flowers he saw while killing off Tekestas and searching for the Fountain of Youth, Florida has been a tourist haven. But I came of age just as manufacturing and the military - long mainstays of the state's economy, lead by Jacksonville ("The Bold New City of the South") - took a backseat to newly invented mass tourism and an upgraded agricultural sector, just as the Mariel Boat Lift cemented Miami's status as capital of Latin America, after the influx of snow birds and Baby Boomers but before the boom of babies born to folks from other states and other countries. I'm not pre-Disney, but I'm pre-Disneyfication.

I remember taking U.S. 17 to Orlando, U.S. 90 to Tallahassee, and A1A to Daytona Beach, passing the original themed attractions built along winding hightways at the advent of the Motor Age that had already faded in the shadow of their newer, flashier, 2.0 Beta versions in Orlando, before re-inventing themselves in order to compete: the thin, weary dolphins at Marineland; corny water ski shows at Cypress Gardens; determined young synchronized swimmers in mermaid outfits at Weeki Wachee.

I miss those days: school field trips to the fort at the "Nation's Oldest City," Saint Augustine, marveling at the kooky billboards for the Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not Museum and stopping to pick dates off the palms that lined U.S. 1 out of town. Gatorland, Gatorade, the Gator Bowl, and a fierce, sometimes irrational devotion to the University of Florida Gators. Crosstown high school football rivalries between Raines and Ribault and cross-state rivalries between Lake City Columbia and Fort Walton Beach Choctawhatchee back when high school football rivalries mattered. Indigenous place names like Okeechobee, Okefenokee, Ocoee, Loxahatchee, Pahokee, Immokalee, Kissimmee, Ichetucknee, Chattahoochee, Apalachee Parkway, Miccosukee Road (shouts to Tallahassee). The ease of slipping between Southern and tropical cultures as effortlessly as organizing a random crab boil or barbecue on a typical hot-ass April or September afternoon. FAMU's Homecoming Parade, which always started out on a freezing November morning and ended up blazing hot by 10 AM, and the FAMU-BCC Florida Classic, back when it was held in Tampa, back when the Tampa Bay Bucs sucked. Kennedy Space Center and Melbourne Jai-Alai. Dances like the Tootsie Roll and the Tawlet Bowl, accompanied by syncopated Flawda Bass and the raunchy lyrics of Dade County's poet laureate, Luther "Luke" Campbell. The Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop and Flea USA and the Opa Locka-Hialeah Flea Market (straddling Lock-town y la República de Hialeah). Miami with only a small cluster of skyscrapers Downtown and televised vice on run-down South Beach and the original Orange Bowl and an equal number of everybody from everywhere back when, it seemed, more folks got along better (though the 1982 Overtown riot told a different story). Tropical storms with names. Blue skies in the east and black skies in the west. Miles of undeveloped coastline. Flatness.

No, I don't miss the stench of the pulp mills and the knowing where you could and couldn't go as black folk after dark, lest we forget the Florida was indeed a slave state and didn't desegregate schools until almost 1970. After all, many strange fruit-bearing trees grow alongside palm trees. But I do miss the strong black communities and institutions that were established and thrived in that environment of hate. And I miss being in a place where I have roots as exposed, yet as deep as the mangroves in the Everglades.

And I miss Publix and Winn-Dixie.

And skee-ball and go-karts at Fun 'n Wheels.

And Wild Waters.

And Jenkins' Quality Bar-B-Q.

I think I'm just getting old.

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Done-In in Dublin

My three days in Dublin came and went very quickly, mostly due to a rambunctious weekend in New York and mild jet-lag that turned severe in my case (breakfast at 3pm, anyone?). By the time I got out the door each day, it was already pushing five in the afternoon, so my sightseeing remained regrettably limited to walking around and taking pictures of places as they closed. Still, the glowing warmth of the people I met in the Irish capital tempered the chilly, late-summer weather, and contrary to popular myth, most Irish are not freckled red-heads (though it is indeed a striking phenotype). I noticed right away the athleticism of the women and the scrappiness of the men; this does not seem a society made soft by generations of office work. Bikes are prevalent and the city is infinitely walkable; despite often gloomy weather, there's still no reason for laziness.

Due to the recent economic boom that went bust with the rest of the world's economy, Dublin is surprisingly multicultural, with notable communities of Africans and Asians, as well as Europeans of all stripes. The guys at the Centra who let me use their phone: Mexican and Lithuanian. The bartender at the CouchSurfing Zone: Russian. The cooks at the kebab place just off O'Connell: Venezuelan and Portuguese. Of course, I ended up being adopted by the local Brazilian contingent—estimated at 10,000—who come to the country to learn English because of less-stringent visa requirements. I now have immediate offers of temporary lodging in São Paulo when I arrive, and a slew of friends and relatives to contact. I was complimented on conversing in Portuguese for 40-minutes straight, which got me excited about the prospect of near-fluency within a matter of months. Those darn Brazilians...they get you excited about everything.

I also got a chance to hang with the family of one of my best friends in Colombia, with whom I worked at the university in Bogotá and had zillions of conversations on race and politics and on how blacks and the Irish should be natural allies in the face of shared oppression and as the joint cultural originators of American music. There was no stuffiness or pretense at dinner with Kathy's engaging family (starring an 8-year-old bon vivant named Henry), just great food and good belly laughs at her expense (Star Trek convention, luv?). ;-)

Admittedly, not seeing any of the renowned museums (they're all free!) because of a jacked-up sleep schedule threw a wrench in my plan of attack, so that'll be something I'll try not to duplicate in the future. Meanwhile, it gives me an excuse to come back to Dublin.

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It´s the Weekeeeeeend, Baby! (Part 2)

Flying to Caracas last Saturday, I sat next to a woman with a facemask who seized into a death cringe every time someone coughed lightly from a speck of dust. It wasn’t until I walked through the airport terminal in Venezuela that I realized the code-red-style measures transport authorities were taking in light of the A1H1400tothe17thpowertimes84≠3.14∞ virus, though the facemasks and surgical gloves worn in South America looked absolutely wimpy next to the full-body toxic waste suits the officials wear in Asian airports.

My good buddy Jorge/George (used interchangeably), who I met on my first trip to the Venezuelan capital in ’04, pressed his friend Alaa to scoop me from the airport in his tiny, dark blue Fiat with opaque, dark-boy window tinting I hadn’t seen since it was outlawed in Florida in the 80s. Three big-ass dudes piled into the thing (I’m 6’1, George is like 6’4, so I got the backseat), and we snaked down the freeway, through tunnels and past hills blanketed with the reddish constructions of the slums—called favelas in Brazil, cerros in Colombia, ranchitos in Venezuela, “the hood” in the States; all the same damn thing. It’s these areas, coupled with the vast and impoverished rural interior, where Chavez gets his support. After all, these are the marginalized people in what had been an up-and-coming capitalist society throughout the 60s and 70s, but as typical of developing countries, never had their basic needs met on a regular basis. I don’t know enough of the history to understand why counter-governmental forces like the guerrillas in Colombia, Nicaragua, or Peru were never formed, but Chavez has taken it upon himself to incite a social revolution, no matter how misguided, unorganized, or self-defeating it might be.

We bouncedrockedskatedrolled over the glistening asphalt path into the forest of concrete and glass towers of this mini-São Paulo, clowning around and snapping photos like this one (Grams pimpin’ the Z28 with Gramps ridin’ bitch), then dropped off my suitcase at Alaa’s clothing stall in the popular, populated, and poppin’ Chacaito section of town and hit Burger King for lunch. Damn all y’all…I wanted me some BK and they only just opened in Colombia this month. The plan was to find me a cheap, clean hotel that didn’t have a website (those that did were running at US$107 a night, the JW Marriott clocking in at $329), but that also wasn’t a matador (love motel).
Important side note: money is truly funny in Venezuela, and I don’t mean ha-ha, neither. There are two types of currency, the bolívar and the bolívar fuerte. The fuertes just have the extra three zero’s behind the comma removed (100,000 VEB = 100 VEF). That’s not the foolishness, though. The kicker is the exchange rate, which for me was almost at parity with the Colombian peso (100,000 COP = 120 VEF). But on the street in Barranquilla, a point of departure for many Colombians overland to Venezuela during the tensest times of the conflict and now point of return for home-coming Venekolombians, I got bolívars at three times the official rate. It involved a series of phone calls, dropping off pesos at one place and picking up bolívars at another, but for 630,000 COP I got 1,700 VEF. Cha-ching!

So, after some running around in the Fiat, stopping at in the driveways of various familiares and underground parking garages of various matadors, some of which wouldn’t allow check-in until 10PM, we found the enticingly named Hotel Harmony. At 160 fuertes a night, I slept under frigid air and beneath the worldly sounds of Nat Geo Music in a basic but clean room for $30: a damn steal.

G and A headed off to the store for a bit and once settled, I pretty much did the only thing you can do during the day in Caracas: cruised the mall. Believe me, folks, let Chavez try and change this country into a version of Cuba; that fool would be shot dead. Caraqueños are some shoppin’ mofos and won’t nobody tell them they have to give up their Gucci knock-offs and TGI Friday’s ribs in the name of some stupid social experiment. He might get away with some big industry privatization, but there’s just way too much deep-rooted foreign investment in the country at a level unimaginable in 1950s Cuba when the United Fruit Company was the only game in town. Anyway, looots of hotties, including this young lovely performing Middle Eastern dance at a Lebanese restaurant in the El Recreo mall.
In the evening, I met up with George in Chacaito and we took the Metro (fast, efficient, clean, quiet) out to Xica da Silva’s (SHEE-ka da SILL-va) house so he and Xica could get ready for a night of samba and stripping: George “dances” with a Brazilian samba group that performs for private parties, and there were three engagements that night (in Colombia, people always order mariachis for weddings and birthdays…to me, booty-shaking beats drunken group singing anyday). I went as unofficial group photographer snapping stills of the three garotas, the batucada drummers, and George’s samba-esque gyrations. Three birthday parties and four hours later, everybody was dead and we scratched the planned night of partying in exchange for some needed (and very short-lived) shut-eye.

Next up: me, at the ass-crack of dawn on a Sunday morning in Caracas.

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Fly Brother Departures - Summer/Fall 2009

All the pieces of the puzzle.

Behold the itinerary* for my upcoming round-the-world jaunt (click image to enlarge), touching six continents and ending this November in Brazil. In the coming weeks, I'll delve into the details of the planning, including ticket costs, accommodations, and activities. If you're in any of the scheduled destinations during the schedule dates, let a Fly Brother know:

*subject to change.

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Where I've Been: Mexico City

The title “Third Largest City* in the World” never moved beyond the abstract until I found myself circling over the Valley of Mexico on the descent into the Mexican capital back in 2004, when I actually had hair and the associated hairline (and before I caught a whiff of that very special mega-city further south). Golden brown fields gave way to barren mountain peaks that seemed to reach for the underside of the jet. Those gave way to the sprawling mass of Mexico City, nestled on the floor of the ancient Lake Tenochtitlán, and smothered by a cloud of smoke and exhaust trapped by the ring of mountains. It was like flying over the über-expanse of Los Angeles, but three times bigger. Mexico City is big, huge, gargantuan, as in big-ass biscuit big.

On my final approach to Benito Juárez International Airport, I caught glimpses of expressways, tree-lined streets, apartment towers, and skyscrapers which lent a surprising sense of modernity to a place Americans in their cultural isolation typically have no thoughts about whatsoever. Just before I landed over the densely-packed shotgun shacks the surround the airport—the “real” Mexico—I spotted signs that the country is indeed tied economically to the US: Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and the ubiquitous Golden Arches. Don’t think you can get away that easily.

Once I arrived, I hopped on the retro Mexico City Metro, designed in the 1960s and apparently not refurbished since, so it's become stylish again. During rush hour, the trains were packed, the A/C was often broken, and peddlers pushed through the cars loudly offering everything from pens and notebooks to bootleg CDs and DVDs for 10 pesos each. Yes, they were selling Barbershop 2 in the Mexico City subway the week it had been released in US theaters.

With a population of 8.6 million in the Distrito Federal, and another 23 million in the metro area*, I found the streets of Mexico City to be surprisingly clean. The air was dirty, though having already traveled to other Latin American cities, I had previously been introduced to swallowing black clouds of exhaust while walking down the street. Also, being 7,300 feet in altitude, the air is much thinner than that of the low-lying East Coast. So, climbing the stairs from the Metro, doing any cardio in the gym, and getting my merengue on in the club became a spectacle of gasping for air and having to sit down for a hot second before I had a heart attack. The girl in the gym said it takes about four days for coastal folk to become accustomed to the mountain air.

During my five days in town, I hit the Frida Kahlo house in Coyoacán, a poignant arrangement of the artist’s life and work, with colorful statuary and paintings on display no where else in the world. The humungous Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology) has the world's largest collection of indigenous artifacts from Central and South America. There is a great crafts market in the Cuidadela, where I got all kinds of Mexican knick-knacks that my pops put in storage the day after I presented them to my parents. One afternoon, I rode out to the 2000-plus-year-old pyramids at Teotihuacán, built by folks that predated both the Toltecs and the Aztecs.

I wrapped up my days of exploring with a $3 all-you-can-eat buffet around the corner from my hotel, where I met three African dudes on vacation. They were originally from Cameroon, but lived in France, where they sold gold jewelry at a flea market in Marseilles. They were traipsing around Mexico for three months. Play on, players. Then, my last night, I was adopted by a group of youngins who liked hip-hop and took me out for a night of, hell, everything: reggae, house, hip-hop, salsa, norteño, mariachi, swing...they could dance it all; I was very impressed.

Mexico City, you are indeed the cradle of a great civilization!

Check my photos, check Frida and Amores Perros, check these interesting websites (AfroMexico and Africa's Legacy), and check the US State Department travel warnings for a heads-up before heading south of the border (along which most of the trouble is, not in Mexico City).





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I♥SP

The last post of a 4-part series on my year-end jaunt through the Promised Land, aka Brazil.

After an early-morning flight back from Rio to São Paulo, then traipsing from one end of town to the other by bus and subway and car, with two suitcases, I finally said goodbye to my best buddy, Roberto, as he headed back to Colombia the night of January 3 for work the following Monday. Ro is my dog, my bro, my ace, and I'm glad and even blessed to have rocked the holidays with him in Brazil.
And then there was just me, for another week, settling into a city that has begun to claim me the way Washington did nine years ago, when I was just a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Senate intern first sampling the delectables and delights of Chocolate City. I won't go into the details of who I stayed with or partied with or even interviewed with in São Paulo; but I want to impart, with probably as much futility as fitting the essence of New York into a snow globe of the Empire State Building, my love affair with Sampa.

Saudade (prounounced saoo-dah-jee) is a concept famous for lacking a literal translation in English, or even Spanish (soledad is it’s cousin, but not the same). Longing, desire, yearning, waiting, nostalgia, melancholy, wishful thinking, remembering, missing, solitude—all of these verbs and nouns approximate saudade, but in Portuguese, it’s all delivered in one word. It’s appropriate, given Brazil’s history. The founding populations of Brazil included Africans, torn from their homeland with the permanent desire of having that homeland and all its freedoms returned; Amerindians, who yearned for the time before the white man’s invasion; and the Portuguese, already themselves a complex ethnic mixture, longing for European ways and values in this vast, untamed Southern land. Add to the mix migration from the far corners of the country, and immigrants from Japan, the Mediterranean and Middle East, and Lusophone Africa, all searching for opportunities and better lives, and you have a society built on saudade. Brazilian music is the single most profound example of this sentiment: the driving urgency of samba, the wistful reflection of bossa nova, the raw romanticism of forro.

There is a song I love about Sampa’s sister/nemesis, Rio, called “Samba do Avião” (see me sing part of it, here):

Minha alma canta
Vejo o Rio de Janeiro
Estou morrendo de saudade
Rio, seu mar, praias sem fim
Rio, você que foi feito pra mim

My soul sings
I see Rio de Janeiro
I'm dying of saudade
Rio, your sea, beaches without end
Rio, you who were made for me

Rio was made for many people, Tom Jobim included, but not for me. São Paulo is my city: walking hurriedly with the crushing masses changing trains at the Estação da Luz, sure enough of my destination and bearings to maintain pace with the everyday commuters. Cruising in the shadow of the glass and concrete boxes that hem in Avenida Paulista like fat dominos, each crowned by a television or telephone antenna, helicopters buzzing around them in decreasingly concentric circles. Squeezed up against thousands of Paulistanos bouncing to near-religious rhythms under skyscrapers, stars, and freeway at the outdoor Vai-Vai samba school practices. Attending an art gallery opening, the cast party of Miss Saigon, and a tribal house music session all in the same evening, ringing in the dawn with hot chocolate and tomato-orange soup at Bela Paulista bakery before hitting the sack for some mid-morning shut-eye. I long to live there, yearn to add my own rhythm to the constant motion, noise, sway of South America's largest city. Wishing to be another one in twenty million. And as I wrapped up my last week among the hum buzz din of unbridled urbanism, I was morrendo de saudade. I think it’s wired within me, this saudade. It’s what keeps me traveling—"the untold want" as Whitman put it.

But it's also what makes me think that Sampa's "The One." Because my friends tell me I constantly talk about her. Because I always smile when I think about her. Because she understands my needs and wants and fulfills both. And we'll be together when it's time.

I♥SP

Where I've Been: Havana

Three times, legally, I've crossed the Straits of Florida to that elegant, aging lady lounging ninety miles to the south, Havana. Once the crown jewel of Spanish America, Havana was the primary point of entry for settlers and slaves and the last point of departure for the gold and sugar reaped from the depths of Spain's colonial empire. Now, the weathered dowager is home to around three million restless, educated, cultured, industrious souls who barely have five cents to make a dollar of, let alone fifteen. Cubans (on the island, not the exiles) are the physical embodiment of what's good and bad with the 49-year-old Castro regime: a well-educated, physically-fit, intellectually-sophisticated population with every basic human need provided for and absolutely none of the wants. Cubans keep their one good guayabera or Sunday dress sparkling clean and pressed, their one pair of patent leather pumps or loafers gleaming despite the torn insole or the worn-down heel. They stay clean and fragrant when there's barely any soap and sometimes share clothes with friends so as not to always be seen in the same outfit. They remain keenly aware of world events, despite hardly ever being allowed to leave their own island. They could be a street sweeper with a masters in engineering or an ecology-degree-holding fisherman. They could be a prostitute with a law degree who speaks five languages and the hope of one day using one of those languages when some European decides to take her away. They know all about Li'l Kim and Li'l Wayne, and they can identify a black American male by the li'l hop or pimp that we do when we're walking in "don't fuck with me" mode. They are easy to become friends with and will take you to their homes to meet their families and share with you the lil-bit-a-nuthin they have for dinner. They'll order food for you on the street to keep you from paying foreign prices. They'll take you to the beach and to the best ice cream place in town, Coppelia. No matter what age, they'll dance to 90s hip-hop and 40s mambo, and again, no matter the age, they celebrate everything with a rumba. They'll pick you up on the side of the road in their 1958 Studebaker and take you to the other side of the island, if that's where they're headed. They'll make you want to leave your suitcase of clothes for them when you leave, knowing you can replace everything on the outside. I did that once. And I also left my half-read copy of The Souls of Black Folk with an English teacher who worked at my hotel.

See, Cuba, in its virtual isolation from modern Western consumerism, has retained its blackness, more than any other place in the hemisphere except Haiti. You see Santería practiced openly. You see the swaying hips of Africa in every dance, salsa included. It's in their faces, their attitude, their friendliness, their loudness, their sense of humor. You see Tío Juancho and Pepe arguing just as fervently about politics/sports/women in the barbershop as Uncle Junebug and Pookie-nem, only in Spanish. And while you see lots of kids running around trying to be grown (the children are referred to as "futuro" - the future), you also see lots and lots of elders; they aren't locked away and kept from sight...they're out and about, dancing, flirting, remembering the past and participating in the present (I remember how one of my friends' elderly father thought I was an American spy...how fuckin cool is that?!).

I can't give you a post full of links to night spots and restaurants in Havana. All I can do is show you the paltry 20-some-odd photos to which I have digital access and hope that you're inspired enough to find a way to the island before it is opened completely to the utterly destructive power of mass tourism. While I wish for my brothers and sisters there to have the same rights and freedoms I do, I secretly rue the day when the dollar casts a death blow to the already waning innocence of these amazing people.

The photos are from 2003, when I attended and photographed a friend's beachfront wedding.

Where I've Been: Bogotá

Modern office buildings tower over centuries-old cathedral spires. Yellow, bug-like taxis dart past ragged horse carts. The electric pulse of international house music compliments a full repertoire of folkloric standards from the provinces. Contemporary art galleries and explosions of graffiti. Boutique hotels and backpacker hostels. Theatre festivals and street performers. Five-star restaurants and five-thousand-peso luncheonettes. Highlife on 93rd and whores on 23rd. Ten minutes of equatorial sun and ten hours of ice-cold rain. Vast flatness leading to a jagged horizon of green mountains, Monserrate and the Virgin Mary blessing the whole array. Developed-world comforts and developing-world chaos. Rags and riches. Bogotá is contrast, perched 9,000 feet above sea level. That’s high.

If the only picture you can come up with when you think Bogotá is bands of kidnappers and narco-traffickers ducking and shooting at each other through a veil of chicken feathers and dusty haze in a sweltering, tropical hellhole, you've been bamboozled like most of the world by erroneous Hollywood imagery and selective news reporting. The Colombian capital is at once New York, Denver, Zurich, and Mexico City: a (more than) mile-high city with inroads into finance, fashion, commerce, and design, ringed by colonial architecture and pockmarked by squalid refugee encampments. It is, at heart, an Andean metropolis, most people being reserved and stoic and polite; but the influence of the warmer regions of the country is felt throughout the city as music and food from Cali, Medellín, and both coasts add spice to Bogotá's frigid, rarified air.

For 18 months, I lived in the historic district of La Candelaria, just south of modern downtown at the foot of Guadalupe, Bogotá's answer to Rio's Christ of Corcovado, and a stone's throw away from the site of the current city's founding in 1538 (the original inhabitants, the Muisca, had been there for centuries). Yes, I did see nuns slowly parading past pidgeons and soccer-playing schoolboys in the shadow of colonial church towers and indigenous Andean women lugging pack-laden llamas up and down cobblestone streets. I'd hang out at matchbox-sized salsa spots in Downtown and multi-story electronica clubs filled with drug-addled glamazons up in the Zona T. I'd take tango lessons on the 30th floor of the Residencias Tequendama or Afro-Brazilian dance classes at the Instituto Cultural Brasil-Colombia. Taxi drivers were nuts, buses jerky and old, and the TransMilenio crowded, but there was always somewhere to go: cruising at Gran Estación over in Ciudad Salitre, catching the ever-changing exhibits Downtown at MAMBO, chilling at Juan Valdez in Chapinero or Andino, or seeing an art film at Cine Club El Muro's various participating theatres. There's the world's best burgers at La Hamburguesería in La Macarena and Ciclovía Sundays on the Séptima, where the whole city turns out on foot, bikes, or roller blades to take it all in. There's Rock al Parque and Salsa al Parque and Hip-Hop al Parque, and in this corner of South America, Bogotá's the only place to catch the Black Eyed Peas, Caetano Veloso, Lenny Kravitz (though he "got sick" and cancelled), and Kylie Minogue (eh, not so into her, but...).

I had to move because my job there paid peanuts, but there's much to miss about Bogotá (except the weather...think springtime London), which is why I'm there every chance I get. And it gets better cada vez.

Bogotá Tourism (in English)

Where I've Been: Paris

My relationship with the City of Light was not love at first sight. The first time I laid eyes on the French capital was in March of 2004, when I snagged a $350 round-trip ticket from Washington to Paris for Spring Break. I spent much of that week trying to not slap the hell out of waiters, cashiers, and one metro station attendant who better be glad there was a plexiglass window separating my hand from his face. But the people on the street were polite and courteous and gave me no attitude whenever I asked what arrondissement I was in or for directions to the nearest McDo (in my defense, I was on a student budget).

Because of that, I decided to drag my family along for another try. Maybe it was because we had a ten-year-old traveling with us, but everybody, including the amazing waitstaff at Café Odeon, showed us the utmost respect and made sure we enjoyed ourselves. Many thanks to "Shrees le chef," as they dubbed my little brother Chris; he'll realize when he's like 30 how much we pimped him on that trip.

Also, forget the Paris you see in Meg Ryan-type romance movies. I mean, that's Paris too, but real Paris is very colored. Folks from all the former French colonies - from Africa (North and Sub-Saharan) and the Antilles to Indochina and the Indian Ocean - paint Paris more shades of brown than you can get mixed at Home Depot. Good-looking brown folks, too! And this diversity is manifested in the thousands of nook-and-cranny nightspots dotting the city, where hip-hop, house, rock, lounge, soul, samba, and salsa all get played sometimes under the same mansard roof. I don't want to even start on the food in a place where even a dollar-bag of cheap croissants from Ed is packed with lip-smacking buttery goodness.

Paris is like New York in the sense that when you exit almost any metro station, the scene is on-and-poppin, and each neighborhood has distinct characteristics that keep you firmly rooted on the same side of town. Barbès, Montmartre, and Pigalle in the north are all different, but united under an urgent energy transcending Barbès' controlled chaos, Montmartre's bohemian chic, and Pigalle's titillating trashiness. More centrally located, Le Marais is all nouveau flash and glamour, whereas the Opéra and Place de la Madeleine are old-school opulence. The Champs-Elysées in the west and the Bastille in the east form the poles of Paris nightlife, while the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market just outside the Périphérique has hotties, hoodies, and hummus all in one place. And that's just the Rive Droit; Left Bank, I hardly knew you.

There are, of course, the "must-sees" - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe - but I was moved more by the ethnographic busts and scale models at the Musée D'Orsay, or the intriguing design and exhibits at the Institut du Monde Arabe (where, incidentally, I had my first official Parisian date!). But, like anywhere, it's the atmosphere that seduces you: the stylish old ladies with poodles in pea-coats, the inexpensive wine and inattentive drivers, the canned mackerel with mustard sauce, catching the eye of someone still on the train as it pulls away from you and the platform, movies like Amélie, First Ladies like Carla Bruni, and the packing of as many unnecessary letters into a language as possible.

Paris, je t'aime*.





*Unlike it's amazing, multicultural predecessor, I do not expect much from the whitewashed New York version.

Where I've Been: Cape Verde

Cape Verde is an archipelago of ten teeny-tiny volcanic islands off the coast of Senegal in the North Atlantic. Yes, most hurricanes that hit the Caribbean and the southeast USA start off over Cape Verde as typical summer rainstorms. The uninhabited islands were discovered and populated by the Portuguese in 1460, who brought over Africans as slaves. As was typical of Luso-Hispanic colonialism, blood boiled, races mixed, and Cape Verde was left with a variation of skin tones and hair textures reminiscent of its big brother Brazil. After a brief, shining turn as a major refueling stop for ocean-going vessels and a source of skilled mariners for 19th century American whaling ships, Cape Verde fell into long-term drought-induced economic despair, launching a diaspora now numbering over a million Cape Verdeans in North America and Europe, with less than 500,000 on the islands themselves. Cape Verde's best-known export: soulful morna singer Cesária Évora.



I was invited to accompany my good friend José, Cape Verdean historian and intellectual playboy, to visit his homeland in August of 2004. For two weeks we swatted flies, battled dust and heat, watched Brazilian soap operas, met (literally) boatloads of folks from the States and Europe visiting family for the summer, and relaxing on beaches in the absolute middle of the ocean. Yes, everybody thought I was Cape Verdean ("Hey, why dudn't that kid speak Kriolu?"). No, I'm not Cape Verdean. Would be very proud if I was, though. And yes, I know going there's like going to Hawaii and saying you've been to the USA - technically it's true, so technically, I've been to Africa.

Come Fly:


Also:
Cape Verde on Wikipedia - basic overview
Cape Verde Unabridged - news, politics, and culture
caboverde.com - tourist and cultural information
Cape Verde Home Page - portal to other sites
Governo de Cabo Verde - official government site (in Portuguese)