Internet Café Blues
At the moment we do not have a house of our own, and therefore of course, no phone line or broad band of our own; thus we do our e-mail and internet work from internet cafes. This has turned out to be quite an adventure!! First of all, some internet cafes are air conditioned; some not…. Of course we prefer the air conditioned ones….but one takes what one can get! Secondly, one is never sure of the quality of the computer, or the connection one gets. Sometimes the monitor is large…or small…clear and easy to see, or old and blurry. Likewise the keyboard: many of them have been used so much that the letters are literally worn off the keyboard. The keyboard is configured differently, so that the question mark, quotation marks, colon and semi-colon and many other things are in a different location than one is accustomed to. Sometimes certain letters don’t work. One evening we were delighted to find an air conditioned internet café…but spent some hilarious minutes trying to construct an e-mail to our kids on a keyboard on which the “c” and the “s” did not work. Jut try writing omething enible to a friend omtime and ee if they an undertand it!!
The internet tech guys in these internet cafes have been extremely helpful… They love a puzzle and seem indefatiguable in trying to solve whatever arcane questions we bring. They try and try until we are exhausted and say we have to go…and still they assure us that they will have it figured out “manana.”
I am working on one of their computers right now, while they try to solve a puzzle on my lap top. An ant crawls across the keyboard and dies, with my help, on the bbbbbbbbbb.
Church…
Church is first and foremost supposed to be a place to worship God and learn about Him. However, it cannot help but be a process profoundly affected by culture. U.S. Presbyterians are, generally, accustomed to a certain order of service: hymns, liturgy, a choir, a sermon. Baptists also have hymns…or now days, contemporary choruses, announcements, offering, the sermon, perhaps an invitation. Episcopalians generally have more liturgy, more formal hymns, more standing and kneeling, and the sermon is likely based on, or incorporates, the Scripture readings of the day. Presumably, our Lord is honored in any of these services, but they are profoundly different in content and in “feel.” Most of us native U.S. church-goers could probably be dropped, blind-folded, into a Southern Baptist service, or an Episcopalian one, maybe even a Presbyterian one…and identify which “sub-culture” we are in within five minutes.
In northern Colombia, the churches we have been in have been characterized by a prolonged period of singing and worship…sometimes as long as 45 minutes or longer. In many churches there are guitarists, a drummer, a keyboard artist and numerous singers. The worship leader occasionally pauses amidst the singing to pray, but it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the praying from the singing because the prayer begins quietly, but has a certain cadence and rhythm, slowly increases in volume and reaches a crescendo of sorts, after which singing begins again, or there may be a transition to Sunday School or a sermon. In these churches when one person prays, other people often pray along, not exactly silently, so that soon there is a whole murmur of prayer by all. The people are practiced in this art, and join the leader in the gradual crescendo of sound and emotion, seeming to know when to allow it to subside.
Another characteristic of many of these churches is that they love music—the louder the better. Most churches, unless very poor, have some kind of sound system, complete with microphones, keyboard, and speakers—often cranked up as high as they will go.
We attended two churches recently in one Sunday morning. The first was in a comparatively poor neighborhood, although not the poorest of the poor: in this neighborhood most of the houses, though small, are of cement; whereas in the poorest neighborhoods (where the displaced people have recently moved in) houses are often of wood, corrugated tin, flour sacking, or any combination thereof. This church had its own building, made of cement, a good roof and electricity. Therefore they also had overhead fans, which helped a lot! And they had microphones, speakers and keyboard. The drummer was a boy of about twelve, and wow!! could he play! The Sunday school rooms however, had no cement floor—just dirt, and the “rooms” were actually separated not by walls, but by flour sacking. The worship was as described above, except that, actually, the music was not too loud.
The second church we visited was one of the largest and oldest in the city of Monteria, and is located downtown. The building is similar to any small or medium-sized sanctuary in the U.S., except that the floors are of tile, and still, there is no air conditioning, just overhead fans and wide open windows. The sound equipment was much more sophisticated and was accompanied by Power Point projections.
Noise!
We have lived in Latin America before and remember that there is much more noise than North Americans are accustomed to… But, Wow! Is there noise!!
I am sitting at our plastic, dining room table/desk at our temporary apartment in Tolu, on the 3rd floor. From here, right now, I can hear: a rooster crowing… He does this off and on all day, not only at dawn; he just begins about 4:30 a.m. or 5:00. I had never thought about it much before, but the rooster’s crow is sort of mournful, not cheery. Other birds are chirping and singing, too, and earlier this morning we heard the raucous “party noise” of the little green loras (parrots) who always fly in groups and sound very happy! Besides the rooster, I can hear the bleats of sheep that are kept in the yard two blocks away, and if I stand and look out the window, I can see the sheep…and anything else going on in that yard. Yesterday some animal sounded like it was having a heart attack…might have been a donkey, or a pig: couldn’t tell.
Then, vehicles drive by with loud speakers, announcing things for sale, upcoming events, or outlining the political platform of a particular candidate for election. And sometimes, people play music…for all the world, apparently. One afternoon recently someone two blocks away was playing music so loud that our windows rattled and we could not hear each other at all. We could look down into their yard and see the gigantic speakers pointed right in our direction. After awhile, when we were literally in pain from the noise, we decided to take a walk on the beach, and stopped by where the speakers were to find out the cause of this…extreme experience. Turns out, it was someone’s birthday, and part of the bash was to have the person with speakers come and play loud music… So we went to walk on the beach where we could not hear it, and when we came home, went into the air conditioned room, grateful for the first time, that the air conditioner was noisy enough to drown out the other.
Public Transportation
At first, when we did not have a car, we rode buses all the time…or walked, or used the small yellow taxis that are ubiquitous here. There are no cars in the U.S. as diminutive as those little taxis.
There are at least three sizes, or types, of buses in our part of Colombia: the smallest is roughly the size of a large van in the U.S. and is used for local transport, or between small towns. The next size up is the size of a small bus, or a school bus in the U.S. Both of these style of buses are completely open air (no AC) and get filled as full as they can hold, with luggage being stuffed on laps, under chairs, or sometimes up on top of the bus. So far we have not seen the colorful buses, complete with chickens and fruit hanging out of everywhere…but they do exist, just more out in the country. The last kind of bus is the big “Grey Hound” type that is air conditioned, with large roomy seats—one for each passenger, and nothing in the aisles!—and bathrooms. These large buses are used on main highways between large cities.
Except for riding in the very large, air conditioned buses, riding the bus involves sweating, being very close to your fellow man, sometimes breathing fumes, and above all—noise. I don’t think we have ever been in a bus (or a taxi, if it comes to that) that did not have music playing. Sometimes VERY LOUD.
Once, when we were on our way to the city of Monteria to pick up our new car, we settled into one of the large, air conditioned buses and breathed a sigh of relief, expecting a peaceful ride…only to find that the music was blaring from the speakers at an ear-splitting level. For an hour and a half, no one complained; then, inexplicably, the volume was turned down, somewhat.
So we are delighted to have our car. So far, we have, somehow, not turned the radio on once, and have played only one CD, of very quiet, classical music.
Actually, the music of Colombia is very beautiful, and we appreciate the many styles there are. It’s the volume that…. Did you say something? I couldn’t hear you!
