Ciudad Bolivar

About an hour from the centre of Bogota, on the Transmilenio bus system, lies the vast barrio of Ciudad Bolivar (Bolivar City). Despite its million plus inhabitants Ciudad Bolivar is not a city in its own right but rather one of the poor neighbourhoods that lie on the periphery of the Colombian capital. Upon arrival at the main bus station you wait for buses taking you to the smaller neighbourhoods that make up Ciudad Bolivar. In some kind of ironic urban planning, the location names adorned on the front of the buses are for areas called 'El Paraiso' (Paradise), 'Tesoro' (treasure) and 'Vista Hermosa' (Beautiful View).
We took the 'El Paraiso' bus and got off in the community of 'Juan Pablo II' (John Paul the 2nd), before trekking up toward the 'Associacion Biblioteca Comunitaria' (Community Library Association). We were invited there by some friends who work there every Saturday running a media education program in the centre for both kids and youths alike. We were there to do a recky on the place to see if it was possible to build a studio there and also to see if it would be used by people.
What we found was an amazing program trying to bring an education to the underprivileged kids who are brought up in the area. The centre has been running for about 20 years and, after first opening as a library service, now offers a primary school education to about 60 or 70 kids from the area. The centre is such an important project for these kids who, without it, would unlikely recieve any formal education and would probably never learn to read or write without it. It was truly increadible to watch as a small group of kids got to grips with the first basic ideas of stop motion graphics, whilst some others rapped and beat-boxed into a mini disc recorder. The Saturday media program is teaching the kids the basic techniques with which they can express themselves to the outside world.
I spoke in length with one of the coordinators of the centre, Jose Ignacio Caro, who told me a lot about the history of the centre he has been working at for some 14 years or so, the current problems they are facing and the history of the area in general.
Ciudad Bolivar's size swells every day due to the constant influx of the vast numbers displaced by the war between the revolutionaries and the government and the paramilitaries in the country. Education is not obligatory and, due to governmental corruption on all levels, the centre does not recieve the public funding that it so deperately needs. Therefore the centre survives day to day struggling to pay for the basic services it needs to operate and on the generosity of volunteers.
Recently there has been a sinister occurance threatening Ciudad Bolivar. Paramilitary groups have published pamphlets and distributed them, declaring a curfew in the area that begins at 10pm. Anyone caught out on the streets are executed in what the paramilitary see as just targets of prostitutes, drug addicts and youths. Jose infromed me that this is nothing new, however. Youths have long been the target of paramilitary groups. He called it a constant massacre which began in 1988 with the killing of 14 youths in one night. Since then they have been killed in ones or twos, but the amount and frequency of the killings adds up to a veritable massacre.
If there was ever a place where the people need help and an outlet for their frustrations it is here.
A little more humbly than before I sign off.