Author: Mimo Caenepeel

Everybody knows the C in Colombia stands for coca(ine) — and coffee. I have come ready to sample as much of the latter as possible. And not being afraid of mixing coffee cultures, I have tucked my one-cup Bialetti moka pot into my suitcase to create early-morning opportunities for a shot. This turns out to be good forward thinking: during the first week I wake up every morning at 6 am, just when it’s getting light but well before coffee places open. The apartment I share with Kitti has a gas cooker, hurray!, and the first five days, the sound of coffee bubbling makes me feel right at home. 

On the morning of day 6, the smallest gas ring has stopped working. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as it’s not the first beauty crack in what at first seemed like a luxury flat: I have seen cockroaches and found evidence of mice; one of the toilets first didn’t flush then couldn’t stop flushing; the washroom has flooded; and the doors to the balcony are stuck, with just enough room for us to squeeze outside (sideways). So I am not particularly perturbed. The moka also balances, albeit precariously, on the second-biggest ring. I fill it and wait. No bubbling arises. Eventually I lift the moka by the handle to check. The handle drops off; it has melted. I have boiled the plastic. 

I need a coffee plan B.

The good news is that by now I am waking up at the same time as Medellin cafes. I try Juan Valdez first, on the assumption that he is a  local coffee hero, but he turns out to be a fictional character and the coffee tastes like Starbucks (which does rely heavily on Colombian export). So I indulge the snob and the hipster inside me and try Pergamino; they indulge me in turn, in patient Spanish, by discussing coffee options as if I am someone in the know. Each time I pause at Pergamino, I try something else and tell myself I can taste the difference.

Coffee is my drug of choice but in Colombia I realise how little I know about it. I have ground Colombian coffee beans many times while totally oblivious of the fact that a quarter of Colombia’s population (over two million people) depend on coffee production. More than 500,000 families in Colombia produce coffee, with many coffee farms being smaller than 12 acres. Coffee trade in Colombia is governed by the Federacion Nacional de Cafeteriaswhich wields a fair amount of political power.

We allegedly have a Jesuit priest and naturalist, José Gumilla, to thank for introducing the mighty coffee bean to neighbouring Venezuela  around 1730. His testimony to el café, fruto tan apreciable, yo mismo hice la prueba, le sembré y creció, suggests it was his drug of choice too. Coffee took to Colombia (and vice versa) due to the country’s near-perfect combination of climate, soil and elevation for growing it. 

In 2019, Colombia produced 14 million bags of coffee, so high-quality beans should abound in Medellin cafés. Alas, the majority and the best of Colombia’s coffee is exported, particularly to the US and the EU. 

My daily cup is cheap — coffee prices, and wages, in Colombia are at a 12-year-low at the moment, apparently due to overproduction and the growing power of multinationals. I don’t know if that’s a reason to buy coffee, or not. I decide to appreciate it thoughtfully anyway.

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. 

In recent years, the term co-working has crept into my vocabulary, alongside co-housing, co-living, co-designing, co-creating, … I am a big fan of these co-words. They seem to me the way to go: together, but with a bit of space around it.

Co-working spaces are just that: spaces where people work alongside each other on whatever ‘work’ means for them. The co-working spaces I’ve seen differ widely, but all contained large tables as well as seating corners and meeting room. Reliable WiFi is crucial.

Co-working infuses work buzz with a kind of relaxed camaraderie. Co-working spaces are not particularly quiet: there’s always a rustle of people changing places, pausing for coffee, chatting for a few minutes: you are surrounded by the murmur of life. This should be distracting, but it isn’t — at least not for me. Sitting in front of a laptop in a room by myself saps my energy; co-working wakes me up.

Co-working hasn’t been around for that long: the first co-working space, Schraubenfabrik, opened in Vienna in 2002. But the concept has spread fast: by 2013, there were 2,500 co-working spaces across the world; in 2020, that number had grown to 19,000. I start most of my Medellin days in one of them: Selina, a bright, buoyant, colourful expanse of connected areas with lots of nooks and crannies.One of these has a giant hammock stretching out from the ceiling. (In Colombia, hooks for hammocks are an integral part of architectural design.) In another part of the building, one wall has been removed to create a yoga space that opens up to the river, the trees and bird life. This is where I find myself most days at 6 pm.

Co-working is a popular option for digital nomads. I don’t know if I’m in Medellin long enough to qualify as a digital nomad, but I like to think that I am, temporarily at least, part of a global nomadic tribe: a wanderer with a sense of community. Plus (another new piece of vocab) a snowbird: one who travels to warmer climes in winter. 

Medellin is popular with digital nomads because, amongst other things, it combines reliable internet with reliable weather (between 17 and 28 degrees throughout the year).

What is the impact of nomads on the larger communities they land in? And isn’t it a bit of a hedonistic lifestyle? Some digital nomads are beginning to ask these pertinent questions. Last week, I attended an eventorganised by a Social Enterprise called Nomads Giving Back, where a bunch of people explored ways in which digital nomads can have a positive social impact, through volunteering, activism, skillsharing and generally building relationships with local communities.  If this reflects the direction digital nomads are wandering into, I like them even more.

‘Don’t hail a taxi on the street’ 

That’s one of the key instructions iterated by websites on How to Travel in Colombia without Getting Kidnapped. Armed with this sound advice, I have planned ahead and booked an airport pickup. So when I emerge from Customs at Medellin Airport, I am looking for someone holding an A4 piece of paper with my name on it, and I stride right past a man  holding an iPad aloft. But the four large letters that fill the ipad screen, P E E L, have a familiar ring to them, and I backtrack to see them slowly drop off the edge of the screen as new letters appear: M I M O C A E N E … It feels like a smart welcome to what is, allegedly, the world’s smartest city.

My driver does a double-take too – he tells me he is looking for a man called Mimo – but he does not flinch at my perplexing address: Cra 43b #8-56. He only speaks Spanish and, to my relief, I can follow his comments  as we drive towards Medellin through an eight km long tunnel (Spanish for ‘tunnel’ is túnel). He also obligingly pronounces ‘Medellin’ for me, three times: Meh-Deh-Jin. Although in the North of Colombia it is Meh-Deh-Yin.

Meh-Deh-Jin unfolds – sunlit in a valley surrounded by mountains, a patchwork of green dotted with orange brick semi-skyscrapers – and my spirist soar. I expect us to drive into the centre but the driver drops me off in a more peripheral area that hovers between industrial and executive. It is deserted. Not quite what I expected but hey, all part of the adventure of travel…

Both of us hesitate when we scrutinise the address on the glass doors of a tall building: Cra 43B no 16-41. Not quite right, but it is Cra 43B, and the jetlagged optimist in me figures that nos 8-56 must be very near – probably the next building. So I confidently wave away my solicitous driver (Está bien!) and wander, my orange suitcase in tow,  through a silent urban-scape. None of the nearby buildings display 43B, let alone 8-56.

I head back to the original building, where a sombre-looking man has stepped outside. He says something in Spanish that I don’t understand. I look around for other people; none appear. It starts to dawn on me that, on day 0, I’m already in the kind of situation my Warning Web Sites on Colombia  instructed me to avoid.

The man gives me a dark look as I explain in faltering Spanish what I am doing in this unlikely spot; the truth is that I’m not sure myself. He squints at the address I show him on my phone, and I remember the instruction not to flaunt mobiles because they are vulnerable to being snatched (‘in which case, do not resist!’). Cra 43b, es aqui?, I ask nervously, mispronouncing the B.

The man appears  as baffled as I am, but he has more common sense: he makes the universal gesture of How about making a phone call?  I don’t have a phone number but I do have a Slack channel. On the other hand, I don’t have data. 

The man takes my phone from me. (I don’t resist).

Swiftly, he finds Settings, types in his Wifi password  and hands the phone back to me. There is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Get this sorted. I find my Slack window and tell someone, somewhere: ‘I am at the door of Cra 43B’. Instant response from my new flatmate: ‘I’ll come downstairs’. Relief emoji!

Some minutes pass in awkward silence. Then, a new message from my flatmate: Where are you? I can’t see you. 

Where am I? I don’t know. But since I have Wifi, I can ask Google. Where is Cra 43b? Google replies that it is elsewhere. I am at Cra 43B, which is different from 43b; I need the lower case one. Una diferencia sutil pero importante.

Having already broken several security guidelines, I do remember at this point that there is Uber in Colombia, and that it is illegal as well as safe. The Uber app swiftly descends from the cloud (A donde vas?), and with sweating fingers, I include a small b in the address. When Jose pulls up within minutes, I profusely thank the man who did not kidnap me, or even offer me drugs.

Fifteen minutes later, I arrive at Cra 43-small-b, in El Poblado, Medellin, where someone I have never met is waiting for me with open arms.