Loud, interested, high, aggressive, brutal, friendly, resilient.
My first impressions of Medellin, Colombia's most over-looked city. Medellin's infamous son Pablo Escobar ensured that it would be years before the city could escape from it's violent and tough past. But it seems like those years are now.
Recent redevelopment has improved livability, likability and security of the city, with honest money replacing drug money as the catalyst for change.
Libraries, metro cable cars and education programs have taken the barrios to violent, depressing human waste lands to thriving and vibrant suburbs where education is available for all. Children can once again play in the parks, women can walk the streets and locals can shop, study and play within their own environment.
But it's not all rosy and merry. Drug gangs still fight hard for their territories, with Medellin being a transit city for drug and arms shipment across the country and in and out of the Caribbean. Cocaine is still a huge trade, but for the locals, it is mostly left untouched, sent onwards and upwards. Marijuana is however widely used and abused.
The unemployment rate is sending proud men to the streets and to crime. The saying goes, no dar la papaya and nothing bad will happen. In toher words, if you get robbed it's your fault for owning something worth robbing, not the fault of the robber for seizing the opportunity.
But paisas (those from Medellin) have a reputation for resilience and resourcefulness. They've survived the war years and now they can begin to see changes, changes worth sicking around for.
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