Sunday

This was my last chance to go along to help feed the homeless Martha and Oscar picked me up at around 7.00 and we headed south... On the way I found out we were going to alternate site rather than the more usual Parque Espana. The meeting place for this visit was the Parque Millenium.. Another area that had been renovated into an open area with water features and trees. In the centre of which sits the city morgue. (Kind of changes the perspective a little) The Parque is patrolled by Police and Military not for any particular danger but more to make sure as soon as the homeless are fed they are moved on.










This is a much smaller group than meets elsewhere and the age range of the homeless is dramatically different. In Espana the age range would be 18 to 30 but at Millenium there are 2 distinct age ranges 40 to 60 and 5 to 15.
As you can see from the following photo this area is not one of the nicer areas of Bogota. The whole parque area was like this until they bulldozed it throwing even more people out of what little protection they had and making the areas around the parque even worse.











Meeting the poor and the views of poverty I have seen here in Bogota cab be heart rending.. to see people with nothing when to them I am rich beyond their wildest dreams can be hard to accept. Martha has said many times giving them money would not help and sadly its true, the money would not go on food or clothing it would not be used for survival but only to purchase a drug fix or enough moonshine liquor to blot out the day. In all my travels in and around Bogota I have not been to the far south. If you think of Bogota as a straight line running North South with a dot at the middle, thats as far as I have been.

The south takes the level of poverty to an even more dramtic level than where I have been too. Needless to say even the Catholic group I have been out with don't venture further south. So for a Gringo it would not be a wise move unless well protected.

Finally today it was strange to be saying goodbye to people I hardly know yet they were all wishing me a safe journey for when I leave. Colombians by nature are very friendly people with a warmth that bypasses language difficulties.

The days left are few... as of now 7 days and counting down.

Manyana