Tejo: a drinking mans game

The excitement of the May Day occurances has well and truly dissipated from the streets of Bogotá. Up in the Candelaria district, where we watched riot police and youths exchange gifts so courteously from great distances the other day, the park is now its usual throng of flea market stalls and Sunday strollers. In fact we even saw some police happily conversing with some hippies about their enchanted bangles. Quite a reverse from the action the other day.
So, at least on the surface, peace reigns on the sunny streets of Bogotá once more where we have been running around trying to get in as many meetings and finish off what we set out to accomplish over here. Yesterday, whilst Nick was putting a few finishing touches on the studio we are making (it´s only lacking a lick of paint now), I was visiting Patricia and her youth radio workshop in Suba. I already explained about `Suba al Aire´s´ struggle to obtain a license to transmit radio legally so I won´t repeat myself. I was invited by Patricia to go Suba´s casa de cultura (cultural house or centre) to see what goes on there and to visit her youth community radio workshop.
The program they are running there is fantastic and is open to all local kids for free. I saw a class of kids that was being led by a former pupil of Patricia´s and they were really getting a lot out of the it. The great thing about the set up is that now past students are staying on to take up the mantel and pass on their knowledge to the younger kids. The project is really providing the kids with an alternative as the young teacher informed me. Without this he would have no choice but go into low paid construction work, now he comes into contact with technology and new forms of self expression. The highlight of the trip for me was probably when I had to sit down in front of the class whilst they fired questions at me for what was probably about 10 minutes. For them it was contact with a world that they know very little about. For me it was humbling to be on the recieving end of questions. My companion Angela was also interrogated, although to a lesser extent, and she is planning to link up an exchange withSuba al Aire and the kids that she works with so that they can work together. Links such as these are really important, as Patricia explained to me, as they demonstrate to the kids that they are not alone in what they are doing.
The cultural centre as a whole is great, providing classes in art, literature, radio, vidoe and music for around 200 kids and youths who use the facilities. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, they currently have only one computer for the whs the radio class came to an end, the computer was promptly unplugged and whisked away to another deserving destination. Suba´s cultural centre has such a great link with local musicians and music projects that this is definately a location that we aim to work in in the future.
Today we went back to visit the L-Mental workshops to do some filming. We also took with us a pc full of music software and a Yamaha sampler to kit out there studio with. When we visited last week they were borrowing a pc and didn´t have enough equipment to do much work with. When we gave him the equipment an emotional Natas told us that it was like Christmas. He can now get a message out to all the groups he knows and they can get back into his studio and do some recording. It really feels like Fairtunes can make a differnece, albeit small, already.
Education and the passing on of information and experience is crucial to what we are trying to achieve. This much has been demonstrated to us by all the groups that we have visited. As such we were given a little lesson last night after being up in the `Nuevas Semillas´ (New Seeds) foundation in Juan Pablo II, Ciudad Bolivar. We are getting quite used to spending time up there and last night we were taught how to play tejo by the teachers that work there.
Tejo is a game that involves drinking lots of beer and throwing heavy metal discs down a hall onto a soft clay target at the end. Despite the obvious dangers we had a great time, it was a real experience and I felt like we made some great bonds with the people there. Some of the other locals weren´t too sure though, our tejo playing is definately not up to scratch yet and their amused glances certainly let us know that. Despite our lack of natural ability for the national working class game we are continuing to make some great links with people. Time is running out and we´ll soon be back and trying to get the ball really rolling.