Few Days in Medellin.

To start off, everybody smells fucking glorious here. And I mean EVERYBODY. Those that know me will understand what an autistic little nerd I am for aftershaves, I can pick them out of the air & tell you what they’re wearing about 70% of the time…so out here it’s like Pokemon GO but with scents, which makes me equally as virgin as those who chase imaginary Charmanders around, I know, but at least my hobby smells nice. Pokemon Go makes you smell like the dust from your mothers spare room. Anyway, i’m not here to slander virgins, but i’m just saying, smelling good seems to be a must out here. I love it. Take note back at home you musty motherfucker.

Last night I went for a stroll around the busier areas to grab something to eat & see what was going on, and as I’m in a hot country, I felt like an ice cream. Childish I know, but forget about that. The outside streets are filled with poor families sat along the pavement either begging or selling little trinkets to get by. I was thinking about this as I waited for my ’99 & it dawned on me that I am currently the epitomy of the Capitalist world & how evil it can be.

Stay with me here.

Here I am, turning up in these poor peoples country, deciding to eat a luxury food item, in this case, an ice cream, which has no nutritional value, it’s in no way a neccessity and it won’t fill me up. It won’t do anything. Here I am buying that without a thought that i’m 5 yards away from some family that have been here decades & can barely scrape a bag of rice together. They are begging for money to feed their child & here I am pissing money away because my lips feel warm. It’s an insult to them.

You’re probably thinking that I gave them a drop of change on my way out after this revelation aren’t you?

Well, I never.

Just to rub salt into the wounds, I walked out of that ice cream shop, onto the street & right past them to get on with my day. I’m no hero. The next time I think i’m a good person, i’ll remind myself of the time I almost stepped on a comatose baby because I was too busy licking the drips of ice cream that were running down the cone.

I can fly across the world, arrive in a country & step over needy native children like a third drain. What a pig I really am. I could’ve made their day go a bit smoother, brought a fleeting moment of joy, helped them go to bed with a full belly that evening, but I never, these people are begging for their lives & here comes some white cunt who could help momentarily, but instead he’s too worried about getting his hands sticky. I am worse for these Natives than Christopher Colombus ever was.

The evils of Capitalism are all around us, and we’re all apart of it unfortunately.

Aside from that epiphany, I did a walking tour of a Medellin, was alright, just gave some history of how Medellin came about & why it was so important. If you think I took enough in to relay it to you, then you’re wrong. Youtube it or whatever. All I remember is it was a drugs route & also the story of a terrorist dropping an explosive into the town square when it was full of people dancing & partying, killing 22 people. It also tore a hole through a statue:

The mayor wanted to remove it but the artist said no, and it appears the artist was in charge because it’s still there, along with a replacement:

A lot of conflict in Medellin apparently, although the oldest building they have is from the 19th Century. That’s mad to me, i’m sure the houses on Christchurch Road are older than that. Not much else to report from the tour apart from meeting a fellow Welshman from Bargoed. As a group we were sat under a tree listening to the talk & a branch about 5 foot long fell about 20 foot out of the tree & directly onto his head. That was a laugh I guess.

Today I went to ‘Barrio Pablo Escobar’ or the ‘Neighbourhood of Pablo Escobar’ in English. He didn’t live there or anything, they are just the last remaining people who celebrate him. He took land that was a rubbish dump & built it into a huge neighbourhood for the people to live & work in. He took them from dumpster searches to people with homes & jobs. They love him, even though 80% of Colombians hate him & refuse to say his name. The neighbourhood is up in the sticks away from the city, so I had to take a train & a local bus about an hour away to get here. That was bit tricky because if everyone hates him, you don’t want to be asking for directions to the one place that loves him, do you? It’s still a dangerous place to be, but tourists are known to go take pictures so I figured i’d be alright by myself rather than going on a private tour. It was fine, I even walked further into the place to have a look around, which you probably shouldn’t do, but as you all know, I’m dangerous, get used to it.

Funnily enough, the welsh guy was there again on a tour, and it it turns out we’re going to the same places over the next 2/3 weeks, but I got enough friends so I didn’t take his details. As Drake once said… NO NEW FRIENDS. Not even in Colombia.

I stand by that you know.

Adios for now.

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