Here is a snapshot of what you might see on your walk to the bus stop or to the shop. Of course, the whole of Cali is not like this and a lot of these were taken from inside my gated community, but if you look closely enough, you should be able to see something. Mostly it is amazing, like the ant colonies navigating through the inhospitable streets trying to build a home, beautiful, like the pink Pomarrosa flowers, and sweet like the hummingbird's nest outside my office. But sometimes it is just plain scary like this strange dinosaur-like 4-inch-long insect that once flew into my room! We even had a family of eagles fly around the outside of our apartment once, which was quite amazing.
Although living in the middle of a big, busy city which is dirty, loud and chaotic, there are unexpected moments where nature pops up and grows in between the vast concrete structures to remind us that Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. Here is a snapshot of what you might see on your walk to the bus stop or to the shop. Of course, the whole of Cali is not like this and a lot of these were taken from inside my gated community, but if you look closely enough, you should be able to see something. Mostly it is amazing, like the ant colonies navigating through the inhospitable streets trying to build a home, beautiful, like the pink Pomarrosa flowers, and sweet like the hummingbird's nest outside my office. But sometimes it is just plain scary like this strange dinosaur-like 4-inch-long insect that once flew into my room! We even had a family of eagles fly around the outside of our apartment once, which was quite amazing.
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In any culture different to your own, there will undeniably be differences in the way people express themselves and learning a language is not just about the grammar and pronunciation. Since this is the longest time I have spent in a foreign country, I have really got to know the gestures and other ways that Colombians communicate. They really are fascinating and make English speakers seem quite boring!
What a surprise this has been! My blog has been awarded a bronze award in Bob's Top Travel Blog Awards 2015. I am very proud and grateful to receive this award without even having put myself forward for it. Over 2100 blogs were analysed and rated according to strict criteria and you can see this blog listed under the 'Destination' category here. Thank you again to Bob and be sure to take a look at the other winners!
Cheap perfume: In all shopping centres here you have little stalls that sell knock-off copies of expensive perfumes. They have these little leaflets listing all the brands and names (CK, Chanel, Hugs boss etc) that they've got but it says there are merely 'inspired' by the scents of these designer ones. Not sure that would be an acceptable legal loophole in Europe but I like the fact that I can spend £4 instead of £40 for perfume that basically smells the same.
Postobon manzana or uva: Colombian fizzy drinks in a variety of fruit flavours with my favourite being apple or grape. We need this in Europe! Pandebono: Bread balls made with powdered cheese, delicious warm! Bonbon Bum: Now, this may look weird in English but is actually these lollipops that have bubblegum in the middle. I am discovering the childhood I never had with these! Mayonnaise crisps: Risadas do amazing mayonnaise flavoured crisps! Crepes and Waffles: Banana and nutella waffle and the Pita Griega (a pizza-type thing with olive, artichoke, mozarella and tomato). Who doesn’t love this place?! Arepa con queso: Colombian corn flatbread type thing stuffed with cheese! Colombian cheese: Costeño is like a less rubbery less salty haloumi, Campesino is like a less salty less crumbly feta and what they call mozzarella but it’s just a hard yellow cheese - yummy. Mostaneza: Hands down the best sauce ever. Mayonnaise, mustard and garlic – drool! They also do a smoky Ranch flavor! Vegetation: The hotter cities here are very green naturally due to the climate and rainy seasons. You can always see some kind of colourful flower, tall palm tree or fruit tree no matter where you are and it's beautiful! Mountains: Being in a valley means you can almost always see the mountains which makes city feel less suffocating and gives some stunning views. Birds: There are so many beautiful colourful tiny birds here, including humming birds! Lizards: I love lizards and they are very common here. Just yesterday I turned around in the shower and one of those little guys was staring right back at me. San Antonio: This is an area to the northwest of Cali which is the old colonial area on a hill with a church on top. It is a little run down but the houses are really pretty and all painted different colours, I will write a post about it as it deserves to have it's own spot on my blog! El Peñón: Just down the hill from San Antonio is a nice area with bars and restaurants near big hotels. It is rather pricey though but it has a nice atmosphere. Public holidays: Being a very religious country, apparently Colombia has an average of 18 public holidays a year, the most in the world! Now, this may mean less official holiday days off work, but I guess it all adds up! Gloves to eat with: In Colombia, if you are eating chicken in a fast food chain or a more casual restaurant, they will always give you plastic gloves to eat with so that you don't get grease all over your hands. I think it's genius!
I thought I would use this platform to shamelessly advertise some fundraising I am doing on behalf of my partner. If you care about drug addiction, which is such a prevalent public health issue worldwide and has defined Colombia's troubled history, please donate to help my him study a research masters that will be the first step in a long career determining preventative solutions to addiction.
He already has an offer to study at Cambridge under Dr. Belin to assess brain functions in the development of addictions and ultimately wishes to pursue a PhD in Clinical Neuroscience. Please click on the link below for more information. He has incredible potential but is unable to pursue higher education due to financial constraints and the fact that the type of masters he needs is not available in Colombia. He is currently finishing a BSc Psychology degree online from the University of Derby, UK, and is expected to graduate with First-class Honours (3.6+ GPA). It might make a nice change from donating to anonymous causes where you do not see the impact of your money but I can assure you that this money would make a huge difference to his life and in the lives of thousands of affected people. All it takes is one person to get the right start in their career to make a discovery that will change the world. I am going to help him as much as I can but, of course, that would only be a drop in the ocean and I would really appreciate any generosity on your part. Also feel free to share it to your friends or tweet it to any famous people you think may be willing to donate. Thank you! My blog has been mentioned in the one and only New York Magazine, which has millions of readers and covers topics such as culture, politics and travel. The article my blog was featured in was about what to do and where to stay on a short trip to Cali and was one of 3 internet resources chosen to help readers explore more about this city. I am extremely honoured to have been chosen and hope that this puts Cali on the map more and more as a tourist destination as well as raising awareness about often unreported issues here in the international press. Thanks again to New York Magazine and hello to any new readers I have as a result of this exposure! You can read the article here.
I am not sure why it has taken me so long to put this post up, maybe it is because it feels strange taking photos of the things you see every day where you live. Anyway, I live in an apartment complex/gated community. It is quite a special community in Cali and is quite well-known to locals. It is a cooperative and the only one of its kind in the country I believe. In spite of being smack-bang in the middle of a bustling city, it is very calm with low blocks of flats and a lot of greenery along the paths, giving it shade and making it very peaceful, like a little oasis. It also has the biggest swimming pool I have seen in Cali and it is surrounded by plants, a children's pool and a waterfall feature above a sauna room! It is the only community complex that I have seen that doesn't have really tall apartment blocks. Where I live, they are only 4 storeys high so it does not feel like an expanse of concrete. Here are some photos of the flat, community entrance and blocks: Here are some photos of the grounds, pool area and the little shop. You can also see the Christ statue from the pool area. There are always plenty of beautiful birds around and a sweet old man who lives here as a parrot called Roberto that he takes out once a day and only lets girls stroke him, what a player! Click on the images to enlarge them:
Life in Colombia is both exciting and draining, funny and sad. Here are some random facts that you will not find in a guide book:
1. Car alarms won't let you sleep. They appear to be very sensitive here and go off all the time for no apparent reason. Although it is really annoying that people don't just disable them since they all sound exactly the same and no one thinks their cars are actually getting broken into as they go off so much. And it is quite funny as the alarms here sound like toy cars. They have about 3 or 4 different sounds in the same pattern that sound like toy ambulances or police cars. Even though some cars are the same make and model as cars back home, for some reason, the alarm is always like that. I didn't know cars had accents too! 2. As soon as the sky is a little cloudy, you will see people walking around with jumpers, cardigans and scarves, even if it is hotter than when the sky is blue. 3. It's a bit like how if they get a runny nose, they say they have the flu. Because they don't really have seasons they use certain clothes or names of illnesses associated with winter when they have even the smallest change that loosely resembles coldness or having flu. 4. They say 'in 8 days' instead of 7 for 'in a week'. This is very confusing if you want to make plans with a Colombian! 5. There will never be toilet seats in public toilets. I believe they all get stolen. God knows what for. Maybe someone, somewhere, has a house made of toilet seats or uses them as hats... 6. The army here often stand by roads and keep their arms out with a 'thumbs up'. I initially thought they were watching to hitch a ride.. but clearly not. This was introduced by the ex-president Uribe in order to make the army seem nice and closer to the people. They are obligated to do it as a cover up for not-so-nice things that they are involved in... 7. Being a female expat is the hardest. Especially if you are white and light haired or light eyed. You are often a lot taller than even Colombian men and will get stared at a lot. Stares which may not stop even if you stare back and ask them what they want. You may also get ''compliments'' shouted out to you such as my old favourite 'princeeeeeesssaaaaa!' I often think that my experience here would be so much different (safer, easier?) if I were male. 8. Colombians often just eat with forks which can make scooping up the last bit of your food really tricky and needing to involved using your fingers and even when there is a knife, they often choose to cut up their food with the fork anyway. My boyfriend told me that knives tend to be for meat. They also eat fried eggs with a small spoon only. I haven't quite mastered that and am always the weird foreigner who asks for a knife and fork. Oh, and they like eating rice with a big spoon, even if there is a fork. Not sure how widespread all of this is but I have seen it a lot. 9. Sometimes men wear clear nail varnish to look smart. 10. UHT milk here is more expensive than fresh milk and the rich drink it, while the poor drink fresh milk. It's not because it actually costs more to produce, because it definitely doesn't as there is no need for refrigerated storage or transportation, it's because rich people tend to live on the outskirts of cities, in large fincas (ranches), or big gated communities with lots of land, so they don't want to go shopping a lot because it's far away (or, I am told, because it would require mixing with the lower classes too much) so they bulk buy UHT milk so that it lasts for weeks. I found this so hard to get my head around as I am used to UHT being poor quality and cheaper and I love fresh milk! Colombia seems to have an obsession with plastic bags. Whether it is within the home where any open packet of food is tightly wrapped up in a plastic bag, or the customs that occur in supermarkets where they often double bag certain items for no apparent reason and separate them from the rest of the shopping. Apparently fresh items cannot be in contact with non-fresh items, nor food items with non-food items. So you can imagine on a weekly shop how much plastic is used! Also, if you buy just one item, they will put it in a tiny plastic bag and automatically tie knots in it quicker than you can utter 'I don't need a bag'! I understand wrapping things up tightly that are going to be outside as there are ants and little insects that can get in and nibble on them, but wrapping all packets in an extra plastic bag in the fridge seems a little excessive to me! I would put money on every Colombian household having a collection of mostly very tiny plastic bags for use in this way, and certainly a huge collection of regular plastic bags from any shopping trip.
A good thing relating to plastic bags here is that you can buy water, milk and other drinks in a plastic bag rather than a bottle. This saves a lot of plastic and is so logical to me in environmental and economic terms. I know that milk in a bag is slowly coming to the West, but I am impressed to see it so widespread and normal here. You can't find milk in a bottle! Milk companies are starting to up their game here too, so that you don't need to buy a plastic holder to put your giant milk bag in to pour it. I got a little overexcited when I saw the newest invention (the red bag below), which has clever air bubbles creating a sort of handle. What would be great is a little more awareness of the environmental impact of using so many plastic bags in supermarkets so that it doesn't overshadow the positive effects of the drinks in plastic bags that are currently used. Although I get the impression that this is less an environmentally-focused design, and more a profit-based idea to save money in production. Then again, supermarkets could think along these lines and save money by not having to produce as many plastic bags. I am starting a one-woman revolution and refusing plastic bags whenever I can, even though I get funny looks when I do so. Not sure whether I will be able to single-handedly change the obsession but you have to start somewhere! Just a quick post to remind any UK citizens that the general election on May 7th is creeping up on us and is VERY important to our country.
Almost a million people, mostly students, were dropped from the electoral register due to a convenient policy change by the tory government as students are more likely to vote labour/green. See articles here and here. So please make sure you are actually registered to vote by calling your local office! Now I know it seems complicated to vote from overseas but it's actually pretty simple. You can register to vote by proxy (getting a family member to vote for you) or by post. Given that it isn't long until the election, and post takes so long to reach home, voting by proxy is probably the best option for an expat. Here is the link to get the relevant forms. My advice would be to check where you are registered, ring them by putting credit on your Skype account, or go on the website and enter your details. Or if you are sure you are reigstered you have to register as an overseas voter here first by putting in the UK address you are currently registered to, then print off the proxy form and send it quickly via DHL or similar fast courier to your local authority and then obviously tell your family member who you wish to vote for. Here are some useful links to give you an idea of the parties' policies. Might I suggest that people think about those less fortunate, rather than benefits to the already rich, and the risks that having another Tory term might bring to our education system, our unique and wonderful NHS and the values our society is clinging onto which are likely to be destroyed. Don't mean to persuade but I don't think my political stance is a secret to anyone who reads my blog! Overview of all main parties Labour Key Issues Just a quick post of the International Cliff Diving semi-finals that were held in Cali, just up the road from where I live, in fact! The best cliff diver in the world is Colombian so I assume it is a big sport here. It was a pretty impressive scene and they were jumping from about 25m high. It was also stormy in the background so there was streak lightning happening making it all very beautiful and a little scary that the scaffolding would be struck! You can click on the images to make them bigger as I think some of the divers have been chopped off on the thumbnails!
Los Quince is one of the biggest days in a young girl's life in Colombia. It is the equivalent of the 'sweet sixteen' in the US and is similar in its style, significance and the investment families make. It symbolises a young girl turning into a woman and is meant to be the first time she is displayed for all (mostly of the opposite sex) to admire. A teacher friend of mine told me that his student's families can spend tens of thousands of dollars on this party - gringo-style!
I was fortunate enough to be invited to my boyfriend's cousin's Quince celebration to see the celebration I had only ever heard about from Colombians who spoke of it as something of mythical proportions. The party lived up to this expectation and did not disappoint! It was being held in the function room of an apartment complex towards the south of Cali which had been decorated fit for a wedding. This was the first sign of what was to come. After being sat around a table with some glamorously dolled up elderly Caleñas, the birthday girl was paraded through onto the dance floor, where she danced with all the males in her family one at a time. This included Juan Felipe, who had been told it was going to be a Waltz, so had been watching a YouTube tutorial under the table beforehand in a panic! After feeling he had mastered the box-step, he was disappointed that it ended up being an improvised dance, not a waltz at all! After this, an evangelical preacher stepped onto the scene to give a sermon about how her life was so important and great because she let God into her heart. It felt a little impersonal, but hey, each to their own. The preacher could later be seen taking selfies with the guests like some sort of celebrity. Next, there were various photo opportunities then the food was served. Everything was sweet and savoury. The meat had cherry sauce and the salad had pineapple and strawberry in it. It was very typically Colombian in this way! After eating, came out the pièce de résistance - a Mariarchi band. These are massive here, even though they are traditionally Mexican, and are frequently hired for birthdays, arrivals in airports and, Juan Felipe tells me, for when a man cheats on his girlfriend and wants to serenade her to apologise - how sweet... Anyway, this Mariarchi band did not disappoint. They were incredibly good singers and even had some small dance routines, but they were very loud! I did notice, though, that they were all very old, way past retirement age, and one of them tragically had no hands, yet was still able to play the trumpet. Quite incredible. They sang to the birthday girl and then she blew out 15 candles which were on a huge candle holder that was taller than here. One of the best or most interesting parts of the night for me, though, were the other guests. One table was full of incredibly plastic-surgeried women (a useful adjective I just had to invent living here) with the whole package: enormous bums and breasts, nosejobs, liposuction, 'blonde' highlights and 7 inch heels. They were accompanied by their typically short, overweight and unattractive husbands and a couple of children, being cared for by the live-in indigenous nanny, of course. We heard it on the grape vine that these families were involved in money laundering, but you didn't hear it from me... It left me feeling like I had experienced an authentic side of Colombian family life and society in general, but I was also a little overwhelmed that all of these sides were in the same room playing out at once! It was a lot to take in but I am so glad that I am able to be a part of things like this, as I know many expats are not. It truly was everything I had expected and then some! Tweet Tweet! Or Pío Pío as Colombians might say. Honestly Cali is finally on Twitter! Follow me by clicking here! I will be reminding you when there is a new blog post, posting about Cali and Colombia and sharing photos that may not make it to the blog. Enjoy and retweet the things you want more of! I digress from my usual posts about Colombia but this is such a hot topic in the media and online at the moment that I just had to put some thoughts down in writing.
Although I am an atheist and half French, it is not easy for me to find my identity in this debate and my views are more complicated than simply posting a Facebook photo stating 'Je Suis Charlie'. Even in Colombia there has been social media support and even protests supporting the cartoonists, which is a little surprising. This is the only issue I have ever seen the comments on the Daily Mail and the Guardian be so similar. This has pushed the left to the right without them even knowing it. Farage and Le Pen will be high-fiving each other. I feel like many are jumping on this bandwagon because it has a cool social media tagline and they feel comfortable from their positions of privilege. As soon as the tables are turned, however, these same people would not agree to their children shouting racist or xenophobic comments to minorities at school because it’s funny, so what's the difference? Offensive jokes of the same nature would (I hope) also be frowned upon by the very same people, so why is Charlie Hebdo an exception? Would the reaction have been more diluted if the 12 had not died? Although some of Charlie's drawings have been what I consider political satire, and were intelligent and interesting, most did nothing to further intelligent conversation or encourage political debate. Most people reply to the focus on the offense caused to Muslims with 'but they drew Christians, Jews and others too'. But surely that the fact that they did it to other groups makes it worse, not better. I do not believe that anyone should take another's life under any circumstance and nothing justifies what the terrorists did. For me, however, this is not a binary issue of either being with Charlie or with the terrorists. The world is far more complex than that and so should the post-attack debate be, instead of this imagined dichotomy that appears to dominate. I believe that most of what Charlie published was rude for the sake of being rude, whether to Muslims, Jews or even the English. However, Muslims were disproportionately targeted, so is it still under freedom of expression if one, already marginalised group is targeted over others, such as elites and leaders who would arguably be better targets? One particularly repugnant depiction was of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram as veiled, pregnant and ugly "sex slaves", demanding that no-one touch their welfare cheques. How can mocking kidnapped victims of rape in order to make a loose critique of benefits to immigrants be seen as instructive or funny? Their version of freedom of speech was simply exercising the right to offend. In an interview a couple of years ago, Charb himself said that Charlie's aim was to ridicule Islam "until it was as banal as Christianity". In his own words, this was not satire, it was not exaggerating the right's views to make them look ridiculous, it was anti-religion. How is it useful for a multicultural society to believe that religion is stupid? Were they trying to embarrass them out of their beliefs? If so, they were poorly informed about the nature of religion and, quite frankly, were being bigots. I would go as far as to say that they were an anarchistic publication targeting any form of power or institution. So, although they self-identify as a leftist publication, I'm sure very few on the left would agree to anarchism. Of course people have the right to be anarchists, but let's call it what it is. Let's not pretend they were heroes of Western values or defending the left. They were anarchists who used images against the right and for it. Leftist satire is meant to ridicule the right, not simply display its view. The sociopolitical position of Muslims in the modern world is very different to that of Christians and Jews for whom similar insults may not cause the same offense (just like if I received racist comments about being white, it would not affect me as much as if I were black, as I am in a more privileged social position). Muslims are an oppressed minority in Europe and some Muslim countries are experiencing very difficult times that inundate the Western media. So, saying that Christians and Jews did not go in and murder the authors, so why did these terrorists, does not mean that the drawings are not offensive, and whether something is right or wrong is not judged by how people react to it. And if the reaction of one group is severe and utterly criminal, it does not cancel out any wrong-doing of the publication. It certainly does not justify a violent reaction, but we are dangerously close to overlooking responsibility and justifying racism and xenophobia in order to condemn, or even vilify, the murderers. But the two are not mutually exclusive. Respect and tolerance are surely ideals that should be promoted and protected over boundless freedom of speech. Freedom of speech laws were enacted to protect oppressed groups, not fuel their oppressors. Freedom of the press comes with responsibility and freedom of speech comes with limitations when it conflicts with other, more peaceful values. This is something that has been conveniently forgotten by the right and left alike in the midst of the sudden call for broad and absolute freedom of speech. In the UK, for example, freedom of speech is legally restricted when it includes threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviours which will cause harassment, alarm or distress. Even in France itself, the law limits freedom of speech when it is based on hatred, discrimination, slander, racial insults or xenophobia. These also specifically apply to the press. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights also outlines limitations. How many other rights would people sacrifice for this absolute freedom of speech? Maybe a lot, until it starts affecting them. Romanticising freedom of speech does nothing to further society or reflect all the facets of this event. The difference between the social media backlash here and after a similar attack in Australia is starkly apparent. The hashtag #I'llRideWithYou stands in solidarity with Muslims against islamophobia and is conscious of the potential affect this would have on the rights and safety of Muslims. Joining '#JeSuisCharlie', on the other hand, lends your identity to a publication that printed negative portrayals and generalisations of religions or national groups and heralding the cartoonists as heroes and martyrs is likely to drown out the details and controversy of their work. Although, of course, the killings are important and must be dealt with, the reason why I focus on islamophobia is because this is the misguided repercussion that this event has been used to justify and it is important to situate such events in their sociocultural and political landscapes. Even if Charlie's depictions hadn't been offensive at all, a conversation about islamophobia would still be relevant. You can be concerned about islamophobia without agreeing to murder. The wave of islamophobia has been growing in Europe (and the USA, of course) for years and there is a very real problem with terrorism, but doesn't help us to deal with it when instead we so easily slip into bigotry by painting everyone with same brush. Islam doesn't promote violence or peace. Islam like all religions is people and if you are violent then your Islam will be violent. The reason why there are problems in some Muslim majority countries is that religion fills the vacuum when social, political and economic instabilities arise and there is a scramble for identity within the chaos. We risk putting in more effort to protect the oppressor, by asking for complete freedom of speech, than the oppressed. Again, I am not defending acts of violence and totally agree they should go to prison, I am just pointing out that acts such as these do not occur in a vacuum. The colonial experiment to civilise these 'barbaric' groups and the continued domination of the West through neo-colonialist political and economic forces have undeniably left them with some problems. However, these are very location-specific and Islamic states such as Turkey and Indonesia, for example, are very different in terms of rights and safety than Iran and Pakistan. It is no surprise, though, that the images that dominate in the media of Islam as a restrictive, backwards and violent religion are based on cherry-picked examples that serve the Western ideology. However, these occurrences are not a product of Islam and originated in pre-Islamic Arabia so should be categorised as cultural, rather than uniformly religious, phenomena. For example, the US media conveniently overlooked the mass beheadings in Islamic Saudi Arabia as they are one of their closest allies and preserve national interests. Furthermore, there are Buddhist monks in Myanmar slaughtering people, but would anyone say that Buddhism is a violent religion? Would the media report this incident? No, because it does not have political gain. By the logic being increasingly used to generalise about Muslims, however, extremist terrorist groups should be given credit for all the amazing things that Islamic organisations do. No-one would do this so why implicate peaceful Muslims for the acts of extremists? Sisters In Islam, for example, is a Muslim women’s organisation in Malaysia that promotes the equal rights of women from within an Islamic framework. They draw from parts of the Qur’an that assert that men and women are equal and they abrogate Shari’ah law. Islamic Relief is a major non-profit organisation that is deeply involved in sociopolitical and humanitarian issues for Muslims and non-Muslims around the world. In the Central African Republic, for example, Islamic Relief are attempting to solve the religious conflict between Christians and Muslims and ensure they can live in harmony. Islam is, like any other religion, complex and varies depending on who is practising it. I believe that the advocates of #JeSuisCharlie's fight for freedom of speech above all else would not adhere to it in other, less trendy contexts. The intolerable actions of the Westboro Baptist Church, for example, are not seen as representative of the entire Christian religion and no-one has been protesting to protect their freedom of speech, which has incidentally been legally limited as they incite hatred. Many seem to conveniently forget that the only difference between terrorist and non-terrorist violence is whether it is authorised by an official body or not. The atrocities committed in the name of Western values (could anyone remind me what they are, as they seem to be changing), are only not terrorism because they are government-approved and tax-payer funded. This does not make them better or morally neutral. If anything it makes them worse as they should know better. The idea that terrorist and Muslim are somehow synonymous overlooks centuries of white, Christian and other acts of violence for political gain. The IRA’s extensive terrorist attacks spanning over three decades appear to have been forgotten and, again, the Irish were not uniformly blamed. There are multiple examples of other terrorist attacks that have not conjured up the same shameless lack of critical thought as those perpetrated by Muslim terrorists. What the terrorists want is to incite more islamophobia as this widens their pool of recruits as Muslims in Europe will feel oppressed and alienated, all the while widening the divide between West and non-West, further justifying the extremists' position in Islamic states, leading to more acts of violence. These terrorists are led by greed and power, not religion. Islam is, like all religions, a complex religion of which most of its followers are peaceful. The terrorists use religion to further their claim to power and recruit Muslims using religion as their common ground. To not see this is to assume that if Islam never existed, violence from people of middle-eastern or central African heritage would not exist. If it wasn't religion, it would be something else. Instead of leading by example, the reaction seems to be to homogenise and demonise them which will undoubtedly fuel more conflict and isolation, rather than inclusion and respect. There are thousands of European Muslims who are stuck in the middle and will be targeted by retaliation attacks. This has already happened with Mosque attacks and physical attacks on Muslims, including the murder of a 20-year old Muslims refugee in Germany. Have we learnt nothing from the persecution of the Jews, or the morally abhorrent invasion of Iraq? How can we stigmatise another people, another diverse group? How can we forget our own parent’s teachings of respect for diversity and difference? Is it easier to ignore these as the issues and victims are so far removed from our own identities? These terrorists were not psychopaths, they were people who took a rational decision because of the experiences and life they have had. Let's try to understand these causes in order to prevent such horrific acts and ensure that our opinions reflect the complexity of the situation and do not cause harm to innocent people. During my Spanish degree, I enjoyed learning about all the little differences and funny parts of the language. Those are now more or less normal to me now, however, here in Cali I am learning new local differences which I thought I would share.
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