Medellin is a big city (2.4 million inhabitants), but in my first week I don’t venture much beyond my local neighbourhood, El Poblado. I live just around the corner from a square with stalls that seem to be manned from the crack of dawn till midnight. Calle 9 and Calle 10 fork away in parallel from the square and become my well-trodden routes to Selina, my co-working space.
El Poblado bustles with street life. At the first set of traffic lights, performers place themselves in front of waiting traffic to squeeze in a quick show and collect appreciation money from the stationary cars, all before the lights turn. This is not as improbable as it sounds: the traffic lights show the passing of time by ticking down from 70 seconds (which must be carefully calibrated to the length of a street performance) to zero. Some mornings, a one-legged man does a hopping arm-waving solo; on alternating mornings, a trio in bright yellow and blue executes a small dance routine to boppy music that I find hard to shake off.
The man on the corner who sells avocados and mangoes has slipped into greeting me like an old friend (I eat plenty of avocados and mangoes). I also keep running into a mischievous clown who offers his arm con mucho gusto so we can take a few steps in tandem while looking at each other (he winks); then he offers his hat and I drop in 2000 pesos. That is actually a tiny amount.
A sadder fixture of Medellin street life are the people curled up against walls, asleep. Medellin nights are too warm for blankets and many of street sleepers are not wearing tops, which makes them look even more vulnerable. Every so often, one is covered with black plastic that makes their body almost indistinguishable from rubbish bags left outside.
El Poblado is one of Medellin’s more affluent neighbourhoods. Architecturally, it’s unremarkable, but I’ve learned that to see the area I need to look up. At eye level and beyond, bits of wall are covered in street art. If you adjust your eye, striking, wild, colourful images and graffiti are everywhere.
So are bumps on Medellin’s hilly pavements. More than once, I catch my feet on one of them as I marvel at how someone left their glorious mark in spray paint.