Uhuru to The Andes and Back: Wole, Billy and the books!

The Festival de los libros took place recently here in Medellin and I was fortunate enough to not only attend this great event on a number of days, but to also have the honour of watching sub-Saharan Africa's first Nobel Prize for Literature winner Wole Soyinka (the Nigerian writer, poet and play write) speak to a small crowd mostly made up of the local bookworms and academics. It was held in the stunning botanical gardens (see my photos from the Feria de las Flores) and over the duration of one week there were some great concerts to be seen along with other events centered around the festival.

From Festival de los libros

Here is Wole talking to the silly common folk...

He attended the festival and his appearance included a reading of some of his favourite poetry as well as a question and answer session which he graciously struggled through with a bad reporter and a even worse translator. What a great man!

Check out his Wikipedia page here for those of you who don't know that much about him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wole_soyinka

He reminded me so much of my good friend Tenu that I felt like giving him a big bear hug!

Even though Wole was 'super cool', I must admit to attending the festival more because I wanted to watch my good friend Billy perform in Wole's honour. I met Billy on a particularly hazy night at a salsa club downtown. Billy is an old negro man who hails from one of the poorest provinces here in Colombia and I was instantly intrigued by this character who seems to be an institution at the local spots in the center of town.

We entered into a conversation about the politics of the world and, even though I could hardly speak Spanish when we first met, I was completely riveted as we gamely exchanged ideas, dreams and accounts of the injustices that we had witnessed from the opposite sides of the world. Billy is a poor man and does not even have a cellphone, but his general knowledge is prolific! I remember, on another occasion, discussing one of the presidential debates between Obama and Mcain with him, and I was quite staggered at the depth of his insight into the political situation in the US, his analysis of all the points discussed and the various potential ramifications. Its fair to say that I was schooled by a rather unlikely source, especially seeing as 90% of the 'educated' rich brats that I talk to in my university on a daily basis, display rather alarming levels of ignorance e.g. “So you're from South Africa right? ...but which country?”, “who is Nelson Mandela?” and my personal favourite, “Is South Africa close to Switzerland?”. Seriously.

On this particular night I ended up going with Billy and some 'new' (read: complete strangers) mates to one of the dodgier parts of town where there is a bar that only (and very suspiciously) opens at about 3 am on weekends. I had no idea where I was going, but the conversation seemed too good for it to have ended just yet.

The only way of recognizing this bar from the outside was by the burly thug standing outside of what appeared to be a closed up building. He took one look at my 'mates' and gave a knock on the seemingly barred door behind him. A little while later it was slowly slid open and we walked into this dingy spot with various folks curiously checking us out over litre bottles of aguardiente and ron. There was a kind of purple light emanating from the back of this joint and I could see that the folks here were definitely not from the middle or upper class parts of the city. The music was a mix of Reggaeton (like latin hip-hop...very saucy) and some cheap tunes which had a number of couples jigging along to them on the small dance floor. This was my first sighting of people dancing to Reggaeton and let me tell you that I could not stop staring at this spectacle for some time. I would describe it as sex on the dance floor! You have the lady with her back to the guy and even bent over to the front, whilst shamelessly grinding her booty in his crotch (keeping to the beat obviously) as she holds onto something (like the wall!) to stop from falling over! Understandably most of the guys dancing had a very glazed-over look in their eyes and I wondered how they were going to handle the post-song return to the table? The funniest thing was that after the song ended they all just snapped back to 'reality' and skipped back to the tables like nothing happened!? How wack is that? Anyway, after I got over this little shock I managed to continue my conversation with Billy as we were served some early morning snacks and drinks. I didn't ask anyone to dance.

One of the most striking things about Billy is his voice. It is so low that I swear you can hear his vocal chords reverberating audibly, like some old guitar strings or taut leather straps. It turns out that his classic bass voice is something of a gift, seeing as he was accepted into the apprenticeship of one of the countries most famous bass singers and schooled into using and controlling his gift. He spoke passionately to me about how he was plucked from relative obscurity and even though he has had to make great sacrifices, he has now been gifted the opportunity to pursue his singing career full-time, and this all while dragging deeply on a Piel Roja filter cigarrete! For him there can be no half measures if you really want to succeed at this and I found his story quite stirring, not to mention our talk of what it is like living as an African in this country!

He mentioned to me that he was singing at the festival and I took careful note of the date and dragged Sergio and Alex (polish friend of mine) along. I was not disappointed.

Check out this video of him giving it horns and bear in mind that he cannot speak a word of english!