Sunday, February 17th, 2013

It’s 8am and some guy just rode down the street on a small motorcycle yelling something.  The words on the back of his shirt said “el tiempo” (time).  Is this the equivalent of the town crier?  Like, “8 o’clock and all is well”?  I didn’t recognize the word “ocho” which means 8 so I don’t know for sure.

I often see people wearing T-shirts with words on it in English and I wonder if they understand what it means.  One of Reina’s aunts, for example, often wears a T-shirt that says “Rodeo – Wild Girl”.

As we were leaving the apartment I put the luggage bag from yesterday back in the garage and was surprised to see a Yamaha motorcycle in the garage.  Reina said it probably belongs to Dilan’s girlfriend’s father.

We took a bus downtown and stopped at an Exito.  Reina bought some chicken for us for later and at a kiosk outside she bought a little ring with a clock inside.  This was to be a gift for her uncle’s daughter.  There was a little birthday dinner for her at Aunt Helen’s.  And we borrowed another 200,000 pesos from Aunt Helen.

We had hoped to get home in enough time to go to the 6pm service of a church just a few blocks away, but the bus we took obviously had a transmission problem and didn’t seem to be able to get out of 1^st gear.  Then we couldn’t get the front door to the apartment open.  We’ve had trouble with it for some time but it has always opened eventually.  After 5 minutes of trying I asked Reina if Dilan might be home.  She said no but I pushed the buzzer anyway.  Then I pushed the other buttons just in case some of the other tenants might be home.  I know there are other tenants because I hear their garage door open and see cars and/or motorcycles come and go.  Reina said no one else was home but I don’t know how she would know.  A couple of minutes later Dilan pokes his head over the balcony.  He was home and he buzzed us in.  So now I have to send an email to the owner explaining the problem and carry the garage door opener with us until the problem is fixed.

Regarding Utility Subsidies

The following is one expat’s explanation of the amount paid for basic utilities and how it differs by neighborhood:

”Another factor to take into account are the “contribuciones” that are added to the cost of the basic municipal services. These “contribuciones” are the equivalent to an indirect tax payable by the more wealthy (Estrato 5 & 6) and applied by the municipal authorities to subvention (subsidize) the cost of services of the poorer public (Estrato 1 & 2). The level of these “contribuciones” is quite high:

• Sewerage = 60% of basic cost for Estrato 6 customers
• Water = 60% of basic cost for Estrato 6 customers
• Electricity = 20% of basic cost for Estrato 6 customers
• Gas = 20% of basic cost for Estrato 6 customers”

In a 2009 report I found, Laureles is 75.7% estrato 5 and 23.3% estrato 4.