Murizales: Caldas’s Capital of Color
Manizales Hula Hoop Juggler
Re: Blog post #2, I realized that I took a video of the hula hoop juggler, so here it is (see above).
This morning’s game was at the slightly saner hour of 8AM on a slightly larger turf field with a backdrop of multi-hued houses built into the mountainside. The opponents were not as crushing as yesterday, and while the 2009/2010 orange team is gelling, the score remains irrelevant. From the game we walked to the city’s cable car station and rode it down the steep landscape, across to a neighboring municipality and back up. When told to sit two to a side and be still to balance the weight in the gondola, the boys did the opposite. We floated above the corrugated metal roofs of houses, a gushing mountain stream, the neverending verdant landscape, and the field on which the team just played. But more than even the expansive aerial view was the silence that settled in as we glided along the wires in the sky. (Obviously I was in a different gondola from the boys, hence the quiet.) After disembarking, we stumbled upon a better version of a street fair mozzarepa, this one with two thick corn muffin slices slapped with butter and a block of queso blanco in between. Sy got three.
This afternoon we attended the first of two community events. In the Barrio Unidos neighborhood, our boys played soccer with local kids of all ages engaged in the South Fork United non-profit program, then served them cheeseburgers, soda and newly inflated soccer balls. Many live adjacent to the mostly dirt field in self-constructed illegal housing without electricity or running water. Aside from tremendous views, the residents lack basic things and regularly rely on support and subsidies from SFU. Like with many organizations, you can help out a family on a monthly basis. The money will go into their hands.
This city boasts color in so many forms—the houses, the people, and especially the murals. We’ve walked by many completed ones as well as ones in progress, a row of painters lined up with a brush, a bucket of paint and a steady focus. It seems that like the stoplight entertainers (see blog post #3), muralists are a valued vocation in this society. Whether it’s bold street art, bright soccer jerseys, or corner fruit stands, color makes its way into every frame here. But I am ready to go all black. My eyes are closing as I type. More of life’s chromatics will have to wait until tomorrow.