Sunday, July 02, 2006

mucho polvo en Colombia

...or, lots of dust in Colombia. So a little boy told me today as we were walking along a dusty unpaved road in his neighborhood outside Bogota. It´s a neighborhood way up in the hills, where water arrives through rubber tubes and you have to pay off someone to get access to it twice a week, if you´re lucky. (Other neighborhoods even worse off may only get water for an hour a week.)

Yet business appears to be booming. There certainly are plenty of houses and lots for sale. Only trouble is, it´s virtually impossible to get real title to the land, so you can pay someone for it, receive a piece of paper for your trouble, and then be told a week later by someone else, probably armed, that it´s their house, not yours, so adios.

I´ve drunk a bottle of water and still can´t get the dust out of my throat.

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