I wonder if I will ever have to wake up one morning and ask myself if the mountain beside my house is going to bury it. I don’t know if that will happen one day, but certainly it hasn’t happen until now.
For many people living in poor neighbourhoods of Soacha –a municipality southwest of Bogota– this is just one of the things they have to worry about on a daily basis. But there are other poverty-related issues: deficient infrastructure (or lack thereof), malnutrition, oh, and some guerrilla guys recruiting young people on the high part of the mountain.
I was invited to see what was being done there with funding from the Japan Cooperation Agency in order to build a proper containment wall and prevent the Divino Niño neighbourhood from being squashed by a giant rock or flooded by a mix of rain and sand.
The strip between the mountain and the neighbourhood is where the rest of the houses were built. People were evacuated to a safer place and their shanties were destroyed to build the wall.
Part of the demolished housing (if it can be called like that) can still be seen. Literally, it was a shithole. When in doubt, please refer to the picture.
Creepy girl laying by the toilet.
And her friend.
Two shifts are necessary to speed up the construction before the rainy season (which here is pretty much the whole year) hits harder.
Indeed…
“It’s not what you wear, but how you wear it”. I know. Helmets just enhance my big head, and I betray my cool exterior.
See the blackspot on the base of the monuntain? Shacks were built up to that point.
I definitely look more comfortable without it. Being the word fetishist I am, I point to the ‘tafilete’, which is Spanish for “the straps inside of a helmet” (I learnt that a couple of days ago). Just imagine how many times somebody uses that word during his life. Not that many, unless you’re an engineer or a scrabble freak.
Fuck graffiti artists. Fuck stencil and poor Banksy wannabes. Who needs paint spray cans when you can just apply a water-tranfer tattoo to a wall?
Not exactly wine and roses. But hats off to those who work there. They’re all from the neighbourhood and maybe this isn’t going to improve their lifes but –at least– it will help to keep it from deteriorarating.
