‘We have denigrated the donkey too much’

Peasant Alcides Anaya with his donkey Renault 4. He'll be honoured during the festival.

He’s going on 65 but looks 10 years younger, the inventor of San Antero’s Donkey Festival, Cristobal Correa, teacher in the village and room renter in nearby tourist hub Coveñas. The donkey has to be revaluated, he stresses. “We have denigrated it too much, kicking it and calling it stupid and stubborn”, he says. I tell him these days I’ve hardly seen donkeys in the village. Mostly motorcycles and quite a lot. “Those motorcycles do well on paved roads”, he smiles, “but on tiny paths up hill they’re useless. You do need a donkey!

Preparing for Donkey Festival

A parked donkey in San Anteros main street

There’s something special about San Antero’s Donkey Festival this year: it can be truely celebrated. Why, would you say, what nonsense are you talking? Well, it isn’t. Yesterday the mayor told me in 2011 there haven’t been any killings yet in the village. I didn’t believe him. This area on the coast of one of Colombia’s most violent regions, Córdoba, where drugs transports leave every day, cannot be suddenly peaceful. Yet it appears he wasn’t lying.

Sustainability includes a big responsibility

Yesterday the Dutch website joop.nl published an opinion article I wrote on American coal mining company Drummond in Colombia and its supposed ties with paramilitaries there. In Holland at least one power producing company that talks about sustainability and green energy on its website buys coals from Drummond. There are politicians who want to punish those companies. The government doesn’t agree with that, because Drummond hasn’t been condemned (yet).

Political opposition is healthy

These days Colombia’s new president Juan Manuel Santos is going to sign the so called accord of National Unity with a great part of the politicians who were his opponents during the elections: the Conservatives, Cambio Radical, the Liberals and his own party, La U. The idea is that the polarisation that flourished during the Uribe era has to come to an end. That is necessary indeed, but it shouldn’t be a secret way to silence the opposition.

Malaria, that only happens to others….

The only picture I took in Istanbul

When I was in Istanbul in May I got ill. Thought it was a flu, but it didn’t get better. Back in Holland, in the hospital to do blood examinations, I heard I had malaria. Strange, I had been in malaria areas in Colombia, but one always thinks those things happen to others. I couldn’t do anything but accept this disease that ruined my stay in Istanbul and Holland.

Asking help in my home country Holland

In May I went to my home country Holland, to see family and friends and to strengthen ties with the media I work for. I hadn’t been looking forward much to the journey, perhaps because I had been travelling quite a lot in Colombia. And a very nasty welcome surprise awaited me when I had a little problem in Amsterdam.

Wies says hey again

It’s been a long time since I have been blogging. In the beginning of May I wanted to write about my bad start in Holland. A bartender refused to help me when I couldn’t call to my friends who had offered me to stay at their home and weren’t there, at 11 in the evening, after a 24 hours journey from Bogotá. 

My second Soho looks better

Yesterday I glanced through my second Soho, Colombia’s magazine with tits and bums and sometimes good stories too. It struck me it has less tits and bums this time and honestly that makes me feel more at ease. I read a column by an anonymous woman who describes she was going to have sex the first time in her life and she ended up with… her boyfriend’s sister. Witty column.

Colombia and its Green Wave

Since it became clear that Colombia’s president Álvaro Uribe cannot be reelected for a second time, elections for presidency have become exciting. It is not at all certain that his heir Juan Manuel Santos is going to win. All kinds of explanations can be given for this, but one is the Green Wave.

How to go on after Moncayo’s liberation (or Piedad 22)

Finally, finally in Colombia FARC hostages Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Josué Calvo have been liberated a few days ago. And hopefully the remains of colonel Julián Guevara, that were received by his mother Emperatriz yesterday, are really his. Madness of war. Piedad Córdoba is calling for peace, but that is still a complicated issue. Understandable, after the failure of the Caguan peace talks. People are fed up with the FARC and want this thing to end, as soon as possible.