Colombia - The pursuit of happiness

I should start by saying that this could be my very last post on this blog. The reason is that in a few days from now I will be flying back to London on a one way ticket, not knowing whether I will return to Colombia anytime soon. I have been reflecting on the up's and downs of the past years events of raising a family building a house and running a business here. Along with my visit home I will try to clarify the facts in order to decide whether or not I should stay in the UK or come back to live in Colombia.

I have often heard it banded about that 'Colombia is the happiest nation on the planet' I decided to check this out so I did some research and came up with absolutely nothing. The countries which appear on these non-sensical 'happy lists' are the ones which present the familiar crisp, clean-living image such as Canada or Sweden.
I have come to learn that living in Colombia for the most part can be hard, that is unless you happen to fall into the minority elite group of extremely wealthy Colombian citizens. Whenever I see or experience something that displeases me I always ask myself why it does it have to be this way? It has been a constant source of bemusement to me but I always seem to come back to the same answer. It's because people here don't complain - they just get on with it. Is it that they're too stupid to think freely or to look for better alternatives? Quite the opposite, they just accept things the way they are. The general rule of thumb is, whether you're spending the whole day in a line to pay a bill or you find yourself squashed against someone's armpit or the window of a bus for hours, you just keep on smiling!

In case you haven't been to Colombia or any other third world country and you wonder what the hell I'm whining on about, I have compiled a concise personal list of things which never fail to frustrate me on a daily basis. I've tried to keep it short so as not to reveal what a miserable bastard I really am...
Customer service
This notion hasn't yet caught on in Colombia, most businesses instead of investing in your custom and encouraging you to come back by treating you well, would rather try to squeeze every last drop out of you on your first visit by charging you extra for small things like parking , using the bathroom etc. You could consider yourself lucky if you get eye contact from a waiter or shop assistant, not to mention a 'buenos dias'
Enormous wealth divide
This is the big one; the disregard for the needs of others where the privileged exploit the vulnerable in order to get themselves ahead. It seems that the fortunate are all too willing to take advantage of those struggling to survive in order to increase their own wealth. This type of social injustice is a modern day form of slavery and seems somewhat more apparent in Colombia than in other places I have visited. I guess it occurs just about everywhere but there's no getting away from the fact that minimum wage here is around 8x less than what it is in the US or the UK. This creates a desperate situation where people will often do anything to make an extra buck. Where I come from you can struggle to get by on minimum wage, in Colombia it's barely enough to buy basic food.
Bureaucracy
I regularly take my son swimming at a private club where every single time we have to go through the same ridiculous process. First we drive into a car park, we open the trunk for a security guy to look inside and then we take a ticket for the car park, we drive to the other side, hand over the ticket to another man who looks inside the car again and lets us exit the parking lot. We then drive to the end of the road, make u-turn and come back to enter another car park, we repeat the trunk and ticket process for a third time before parking the car and entering the place through a turnstile. From here we walk through the complex and exit the building where a man checks in our bags and runs us through a metal detector. We queue outside to take a ticket which gives us a number so that we can wait to buy our tickets for the swimming session. We wait for fifteen minutes until our number is called and then join another line where we can buy our tickets, the seller asks me what time we want to start swimming, I say now and he then he says 'sorry we only have a turn in 30 minutes or in one hours time'... By now my head is spinning!
Macho Culture
Violence and aggression seem to be inherent in the psyche of the Colombian male, perhaps connected with their long history of bloody battles, or the fiery Latin blood running through their veins. I have seen fights break out on many occasions particularly on the roads, where no-one respects the rules and every-one appears to be out for themselves. I have very few Colombian male friends because I struggle to relate to some of their habits. Many Colombian men choose to occupy their spare time engaged in infidelity, drinking and playing billar or tejo.


Whenever I meet a Colombian person for the first time they usually ask me within the first five minutes what I think of their country. I mostly blow smoke up their asses by telling them "yeah it's beautiful, safe, friendly, etc" but occasionally I feel like being more honest and this does NOT go down well. To say that Colombians are patriotic is an understatement, they believe that the rest of the world sees them as a nation of drug dealers. This unfairly tarnished image is fortunately changing and as a result Colombians will often passionately defend their country and it's reputation. Things can get a little heated if you speak negatively about it -believe me I should know!
By now you may be thinking that if I don't like it here then I should just take my gringo ass elsewhere. But despite all of my moaning I do feel very much at home in Colombia, my children are happy here and we get to spend a lot of time together as a family. The very reason that all the aforementioned stuff pisses me off is because I grew up in a place where we have something called a direct debit to pay our bills, we have systems which work and sometimes helpful people available to serve us. In the UK I can earn enough money to regularly buy new clothes, take holidays and occasionally eat out. These types of luxuries which we take for granted in our so called prospering nations should make our lives easier but still we complain. One of the reasons I decided to live abroad was because I wanted out of the cycle of being one of the unhappy faces going to work every day, coming home too tired to do anything and then going the the mall on the weekend to buy some piece of junk to compensate for my inadequate existence.


Colombia is disorganized to say the least but perhaps all the wonderful rules and systems which we have in the 'developed world' just make things more complicated by giving us more to complain about. We know that we live in an imperfect world and whenever we solve one problem another one tends to arise. It seems that the west has started to lose touch with humanity and in recent years the focus has shifted more and more towards an ego-driven type of existence. By this I mean an illusion, a life which looks good on paper that society has mapped out for us. I automatically fell into this by attending university and finding a job which I thought I liked but the reality of working 50 hours a week, taking a vacation once a year and having money that I never got to enjoy was not the life that I had dreamed of. This type of lifestyle fuels anxiety which without the benefit of technology and other material instruments imprisons one to always looking towards the future.
I would like to imagine being part of a more conscious spiritual society in which people are closer to nature and the cosmos. The native Muisca people of Bacatá (now Bogotá) were an advanced complex civilization with a tight cultural unity. Their philosophy was based on living in harmony with mother earth, everything was in perfect balance and they made ceremonies and offerings to maintain the cycles of life. They lived this way for thousands of years until the Spaniards arrived to commercialise their gold thus changing things forever. But the Spanish too, up until the development of the their empire were thought to have been a tolerant culture; the south consisting almost entirely of independent Muslim states.


There's no doubt that Colombians work hard, whether as a sugar cane farmer or a street seller they simply have a better work-life balance and they put more emphasis on the important things like spending time with family. Perhaps the Colombian people hold the secret in their unique genetic and cultural mix which pre-defines them to be more accepting.
In my opinion, the most valuable thing Colombia has to offer is it's not gold, emeralds or stunning diverse scenery. It is her remarkable people from whom I am learning to smile, be happy and devote more time to friends and family. But perhaps the most important lesson is that the only way to improve anything is by first accepting it. Wherever we are in the world we all have the right to live happy lives and the Dalai Lama says that to achieve this "a calm and peaceful mind is something very essential" It's true that Colombia has a long way to go in terms of building infrastructure, improving education and combating poverty but I feel there is so much they can teach the rest of the world about how we can live from the heart and enjoy a more simple, carefree life.

For me living in Colombia has not been without it's problems but it has brought me closer to my wife and kids, it has helped me realize my of dream living abroad and running a business and has taken further towards perfecting my Spanish. Added to this I have experienced (mostly) good weather, clean air, mountains and rivers, fresh healthy food and some amazing people. All these things make grateful to have experienced such a quality of life where one occasionally takes a step back to reflect on how lucky you are.

So if you are wondering whether the risk really is wanting to stay... It's time to watch this space.