Have Washing Machine, Will Travel

In the last few years a plethora of mototaxis has exploded onto the traffic scene here in Barranquilla, because I sure don't remember them the first time I came.

Look closely, there are three people on that bike - there's a kid in the middle.

They are kind of maniacs on the streets - people already don't really follow the traffic rules and the motos zip in and out of the cars, regular and pickup truck taxis and the kings of the road, the busses. Besides people, they also transport all sorts of stuff, tires, groceries and huge stacked and bungee-corded crates of lord knows what. A couple nights ago I saw pizza delivery motos with a big metal hot box permanently attached to the back for carrying the pizza boxes. A day or two before that I saw one with what looked like a washing machine strapped to the back.

Yesterday I found out that it WAS in all likelihood, indeed a washing machine.

I've been doing an exchange a few times a week with Mirna, a sweet lady who is studying for her TOEFL test and can't afford English lessons, but heard about me through one of her friend's who is an English professor at Universidad Del Norte. It's been good because it's just one on one, and she's been helping me with the basic stuff that I need to fill in the blanks between what I learned before I came and the advanced intermediate stuff they were teaching during my immersion course. Yesterday we were talking about cultural differences between here and the US. She's a nurse and a teacher, and she has been to Atlanta before, hoping to get a job but didn't pass the TOEFL the first time. She's really intrigued by the whole idea of freelance and working from home, and wants to know why there were so many nail salons and why they are staffed by Korean men. Here there are much fewer and it's all Colombian women. They even come to your house so you don't have to out.

There's actually quite a lot here you can call into your house, including laundry machines! You can rent one for a few hours, or a whole day, depending on how much laundry you have to do. And they bring them to you on the back of a mototaxi! Apparently it's a very good business, as they don't really have laundromats here! And I guess the mototaxis are helping reduce the carbon footprint a bit, as does sharing a washing machine. Still blows my mind though.

If there's a Korean nail salon in every strip mall in Atlanta, there's someone on every corner and at every stoplight in Barranquilla trying to sell phone cards. Most people, if not all, have more of a pay-as-you-go format for the phones as opposed to a monthly plan. I think some of those places might also offer by-the-minute use of a phone to call pretty much anywhere, but not entirely sure about that.

The other thing on pretty much every corner and plenty of places in-between are little fruit stands. They maybe have a few different kinds of fruit, or some of them make fresh juice. I don't really understand though, how they make a living. It looks like a lot of sitting around in the shade, which is great, but even the one guy who was really pushy and came right up to our car window sold us a huge bunch of little bananas for about $1! I guess at the end of the day they've got their fruit to eat, and if they were able to sell enough to buy some rice or beans to supplement the fruit they are probably doing ok food-wise at least.