The Salt Cathedral near Bogota

About 30 kilometers outside of Bogota, you can find a very unique tourism experience: the "salt cathedral". Millions of years ago - believe it or not - what is now Colombia was under water of the ocean (and now it is 3,000 above sea level...). After the water disappeared, huge amounts of dried salt integrated with the formation of the nowadays mountains (I am sure there is a more scientific way to explain this). The local indigenous communities in this area produced salt by tapping mountain river water in big ceramic containers, boil the water and then have the salt. Back then salt was worth more than gold. The European invaders started producing the salt in more industrious ways (basically using the indigenous people as slaves) and along the years the salt mining became more and more mechanized. The mountain where the current salt cathedral can be found had three levels of mining during the past few hundred years, and the most current level is huge. You really have to visit the place and see the explanatory video to get an understanding. Part of the old mine was converted about 20 years ago in a "cathedral" and tourism attraction. It is really impossible to make good photos, because the setting is so unique, but I tried. So here are a few photos to give you an impression...

At the entrance you can buy a variety of combinations of activities from guided tours to getting an impression of the salt mining. We were hosted today by friends of the national ministry of tourism, so we got "VIP treatment". Our guide was an excellent story-teller:

This is the tunnel towards the old mining area which has been converted in a tourist area and a cathedral. The making of the cathedral originated by the many religious habits of the salt miners but I can't even try to repeat the great stories our guide told us. You will just have to visit yourself. Along the way many of the old salt mine shafts have been converted in small temple-like settings, all symbolizing something of the path Jesus Christ had to make during the crucification. Here is one of these 17 or 18 locations, but making photos that do honour to the place is really not easy...

This is the larger area, the "catherdral" where at special ocassions such as Christmas and Easter ceremonies are conducted. From below (from the alter area) it looks like this:

The lighting in the old mine shafts and the cathedral area are spectacular. The photo above shows an area still rich on salt chrystals. We also did a short tour to get an impression of how the original miners had to do their work. During this tour we were shown how the salt and rock over time layered (and we are talking about a process during millions of years):

 

 

And this is how the original miners would hack away at the rocks. Salt chrystals in the rocks are much harder than you think....  As any good tourism destination, also the salt cathedral has a souvenir area since 2 or 3 years, all in the old mine shafts...

After this very interesting visit, we had a lunch in a wonderful rustic restaurant with excellent local food. I close this post with a few photos of the lunch and with sincere thanks to my hosts of the day!

Map of the Bolivar province

Just got this really good map of the province where the focus of our "Education for Employment" program will be. In Colombia a province is called "Departamento", and Departamento de Bolivar stretches from the Atlantic Ocean (where its capital Cartagena is located) to quite a way to the south. We focus our EFE program activities with SENA in the smaller pink area of the municipality of Barranca de Loba and the green area in the south of the municipality of Santa Rosa del Sur. To get to Barranco de Loba you have to drive seven hours, and from there it is about six hours in the river boat to Santa Rosa del Sur. Gives you an idea of the distances...

The red area is the Bolivar province and it gives you an idea of its size compared to the total size of Colombia. Bogota is located just south of the pink area (Santander province) under Bolivar.

Cartagena is the yellow area on the Atlantic coast, and I already dedicated several posts on this wonderful city. SENA Bolivar has three main campuses in Cartagena, and one of them is the center for Agri-business & Mining with whom we concentrate the EFE program work. This center offers programs in the entire province up to in the south of Santa Rosa del Sur. You can imagine that this is logistically not an easy thing to organize. Part of the training delivery is "distance", but they also offer a fair bit of in-person training. In some cities (like Mompox, see earlier post), SENA has a dedicated building, but in most smaller towns they make use of local high schools and other locations

In this list you see part of the 45 municipalities in the Bolivar province, and the two pilot communities we cover with our EFE program are Barranco de Loba (35) and Santa Rosa del Sur (44)

Here you see the area where Barranco de Loba (35) is located, a region in the Magdalena river delta
 

 And here you see the Santa Rosa del Sur (44) region. This southern part of the Bolivar province borders with Cesar, Santander (see my post on the city of Barrancabermeja) and Antiqouia, where we have also a few pilot communities for our EFE program in Puerto Berrio, Remedios and Segovia (see also previous posts of my visist there in March).

Hope this helps you to get a bit better idea of where we concentrate our EFE program activities. During the past few decades this southern region of Bolivar has been seriously impacted by the conflict between the government and guerilla groups such as the FARC and ELN. Now that peace negotiations seem to go well, this part of the country - which was so isolated - might turn a page and become more part of the formal economy of the country. That is why SENA wants to increase its training program offering in these communities. Since the main economic activities are gold mining and small scale agriculture, these sectors will have the focus of our EFE program.

We have done the community stakeholder sessions in February, March and April, and are now making a "gap analysis" of what programs SENA has ready to start delivering as of July, which programs need some "upgrading" (possibly together with the Canadian colleges) and which programs need to ne newly developed (with the Canadian colleges). This work will result in "terms of reference" packages for five Canadian colleges, and the selection process for these five colleges will take place during the second half of 2013, so that they can start their three years of cooperation with SENA in early 2014. On we go... these processes take time, because SENA is a huge organization offering programs to already 7 million Colombians. And on the Canadian side we have to step by step approve with ACCC and with the funding agency CIDA.... accountability & transparency...

La Candelaria - oldest part of Bogota

From one of my previous posts you might remember the Monseratte overlooking the city of Bogota (on this photo at the top of the hill). At the foot of the Montseratte is "La Candelaria" which is the oldest part of the city where the first settlers from Spain tried their luck to find "Eldorado", the rich gold mining areas. La Candelaria has a bohemian atmosphere a bit like "quartier latin" in Paris and several universities are located around this part of town. Walking around in this area gives you views like in the following photos:

 

This is one of the oldest public squares of town, and the next photo shows you the plaque mounted on the house central in the photo above:

Going back to the early 1500's......

Thanks Alvaro for another nice afternoon learning more about the city you grew up in !

National holidays

Colombia has a fair amount of national holidays. Today was one of them. After doing some work in the morning in my apartment, I decided to go for a nice walk. I walked over to a long stretched park on Calle 88, where a lot of people hang out during weekends and festive days. This photo is at the end of the park towards the mountain range in the east (where my apartment is on Calle 72):

In this area of the town live a lot of "expats". On the photo a group of them enjoying a picnic with their little kids (see all the strollers). Others prefer to do work-outs in special areas of the park:

Good advice in the work-out area about your "corazon" (heart) and "estar en forma" (being fit).
On a day like this, there is a lot less traffic on the roads. Below a view of Carrera 18 towards the south. In the middle of the road is the special area for the "Millenium" bus system which criss-crosses the city from north to south with a few lines out west as well. During the work week these buses are almost as busy as the subways in Tokyo...

I walked then to "Parque 93" (at Calle 93), one of the night-life areas of the "Zona Rosa" with restaurants and bars just a few blocks from "Zona T" at Calle 82. Many weekends and national holidays there are events in this park, but today is was rather quiet, so I spoiled myself with a nice lunch (sorry for the food lovers... forgot to take a photo when the food arrived... to happy to attack it when it was served... chicken with lots of guacamole). After lunch a party bus circled the park:

You can't see it well on the photo, but this old style bus was full of people dancing......
I topped off the nice walk with my daily fix of great Colombian coffee:

Hasta la proxima; see you next time. Back to work.....

Project meetings

Being a foreign advisor for a social inclusion project in a country like Colombia at an organization like SENA (which offers short term vocational & trades training to about 7 million people each year) requires all sort of "peoples skills". Yesterday we had a meeting with 16 professionals from SENA on our EFE (Education for Employment) project which started at 8 AM and lasted till 6 PM. Five people came from the provinces of Bolivar and Antioquia, where our EFE project activities are concentrated and joined ten colleagues from the HQ of SENA in Bogota. Teachers, managers and advisors from mining, agriculture, entrepreneurship and other social inclusion programs participated. It was the first meeting of such a scale to reflect on the work we have done as a team during the past four months and also to update a few new colleagues for our EFE program implementation. The dynamics were great and it is always a good sign when I don't have to do a lot of the talking or stimulating at such sessions as an outside advisor...

To the right on this photo are Aida and Blanca, two coordinators of SENA in the Antioquia province. To their left two curriculum developers for the mining training programs at SENA HQ and in the middle Rodolfo, one of the teachers of SENA in the south of the Bolivar province. Aida and Blanca presented the work they have done in April in two mining communities in Antioquia to get input from the local people on what they perceive as additional training needs to be delivered by SENA:

 

To the right of Aida and Blanca is Sandra, my great partner-in-crime at the Bogota office, and next to her sits Juan Guillermo, the manager in Antioquia, a real project champion.

 

Fredy is a mining expert and advisor to SENA about their training programs. He presented a recent analysis of the demand and offer of technicians and technologists needed in the mineral mining of Colombia. The harder part is to make estimates about the needs for short term training courses.

During the lunch break Sandra, Bibiana (on the right), Juan Guillermo and I had a Skype meeting with Anne-Marie Robert, the Project Support Officer in the ACCC office in Ottawa. I will finish this short post with a photo of Bibiana and Juan Guillermo immersed in that conversation. I look forward to accompany Bibiana and Juan Guillermo from May 29 to June 8 during a training trip to Canada during which we will attend the annual ACCC conference as well as visit a few Canadian community colleges in northern British Columbia.

 

Canadian colleges active in Colombia

After the visit from Katie Orr and Zoran Kondali of Nova Scotia Community College a few weeks ago, this week I assisted Patricia Bowron, Director International at College of the Rockies, for a few days in Bogota. One of the meetings was at Universidad Iberoamericana with whom Pat signed yesterday an MoU for exchanges, technology transfer and possible work together on Corporate Social Responsibility projects. She signed the agreement with Rafael Stand Nino, the Rector:

Rafael, who is also President of the "Centro Internacional de Responsabilidad Social & Sostenibilidad" invited us for one of their events this week. Three companies presented the work for which they were rewarded with CSR awards by the center that Rafael started. One of the presentations was by CEMEX, a Mexican owned company doing interesting projects in construction reaching out to vulnerable populations.

The CSR was presented as part of a holistic thinking about the quality of work the private industry must be doing to thrive in today's realities. Pat did her best to follow everything in Spanish...

Next to the work we were able to also enjoy a bit of what a big city like Bogota offered despite the constant rain these days. The photo above is a group of music students performing beautifula Andean music. Pat, it was fun to have you here a few days!

The EFE program is progressing well. Tomorrow we have a meeting with the new SENA Director overseeing all the international cooperation projects, and next week Monday we will have a full day meeting with the SENA team on our work for the coming 3-4 months. Two of the team members will have to miss this meeting because they will be in Canada all of next week visiting a college in Quebec, having a meeting with colleagues of other EFE programs in Africa and the Caribbean, and attending a Forum of the North-South Institute in Ottawa.