Things You Should Know About Colombia

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COLOMBIA 

I do talk about my time in Colombia from time to time and sometimes I make it seem like it was this grand adventure where I enjoyed every minute and it was a spectacular six-month vacation where there was no sadness (sarcasm ends). In reality, it was just like living a regular life at times even though I did get pissed off there. Here are some of the big things that frustrated me about Colombia:

Not Being On Time:
I'm not sure if it was just my Girlfriend's family or it was Colombians in our neighborhood but events did not really seem to have a "definite" start time. I was pretty angry when my Girlfriend's cousin told us that the birthday party at 8pm and no one showed up till about 10pm. My girlfriend had to sit me down and explain to me that Colombians don't exactly abide "the time". If they say a party starts at 6pm. Expect everyone to start coming two hours later. It seems like everyone wants to just wait until the party has started to come. Nevertheless, this spills over to business functions, family gatherings, and normal friendly meetings. As someone who is punctual, it does start to wear on you even if you know that they'll be late.

Safety:
Where we lived in Colombia general overall safety was very annoying. I had to be very careful walking around at night at the beginning because my Spanish wasn't very good. What does that mean? I am American. What does that mean if I'm American? That I'm "rich", so I was definitely a target to get robbed. Other points were that I couldn't take my phone out in the street. Not too many in the area I lived in could afford iPhones. So again, that signaled that I "had money" (in actuality it's just normal to have those things in America). Taking out my phone made me a target nonetheless. I remember one time we were shopping downtown and my girlfriend's grandma was talking on the phone. Then she saw someone looking at her a scratch her cheek and started freaking out. I, of course, had no idea what was going on, but after the ordeal, they explained to me that that was the signal that a thief is around. Safety, in general, is a preoccupation that you get used too, but there is a reason why one of Colombians famous sayings is "No Dar Papaya"

Traffic:
The traffic in Bogota, Colombia is absolutely ridiculous. Colombians have something called "Pico y Placa". To simplify, if a license plate ends in an even number you can drive the car on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If it has an odd number then you can drive it the other days. Motorcycles can drive whenever. So at any given half, the cars in Bogota are on the Road.....and there is STILL an insane amount of traffic. It's incredible and frustrating when you need to get somewhere and you're trying to get there during peak hours. This includes Taxis as well because that increases the amount of money you're paying for a taxi.

Dishonesty:
One of the BIG differences between Colombia and the US is "dishonesty". I was robbed a number of times by making mistakes, not at gunpoint. Unfortunately, whenever someone had the advantage of scamming me out of money, they took that opportunity. Most of the time we caught it, would get angry then leave, but there were two times where I was not able to catch it and that was giving too much money to the taxi driver and he sped off with my change as I was already out the car. The other time was when I dropped my money (that could be anything though). It taught me a lot of lessons about security and "Dando papaya".

Racism:
This one hit kind of hard. I'm African American and often I am confused about Afro-Latino because honestly there is no difference other than African Americans speak English and Afro-Latinos speak Spanish. The social class system in Colombia is a lot more prevalent and Africans are more commonly considered in the lower class in Colombia. For that reason, there is a lot of prejudice and assumptions that I was poor everywhere I went. A lot of assumptions that I couldn't afford what I was looking at or just overall bad attitudes after asking for something assuming I was poor. Their mood would change when they heard my accent and I was struggling a little to speak Spanish. When they found out where I was from all of the sudden the mood changed. It was a little upsetting that this was an often occasion. Granted, I didn't live in the greatest part of the city and my Spanish his heavily influenced by the southern part of the city. It was still a little unsettling to find Racism more prevalent in Colombia.

Learning Spanish:
Learning Spanish was an incredibly frustrating part about Colombia too. That part is too obvious though and it doesn't really have much to do with "Colombian Culture" but it was definitely something that made living in Colombia annoying at the time so it's hard to leave it out. Nowadays when I speak Spanish it isn't a headache and an anxiety check, but before it was definitely a headache trying to get my point across without sounding like a 4-year-old.

Conclusion:
This isn't a slam piece on Colombia. Of course not! It's an article to show you guys the realities of the country. Would I go back? Already am! Would I live there again? Definitely will. Does Colombia have its problems? Of course, just like every other country in the world. The only thing is that people seem to think that Latin American Countries are all paradise and learning Spanish is super easy. Both are wrong. The countries have their faults and the language takes a lot of practice. I'm still a Colombian at heart! (And legally I guess haha)