Musings from a Bogotá café

Sitting in a chic Bogotá café in El Nogal, one of the city’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, I find myself in the not-entirely-unfamiliar position of patiently waiting for a student who has clearly forgotten all about our appointment.

As I still have an hour until my next scheduled meeting, this means that I am left with time to kill. I start writing, as it seems as good a way to pass the time as any, and I look up regularly to observe the people around me – my fellow café-dwellers.  A tall, James Bond / bodyguard-type in a grey suit and Ray Bans arrives looking a little lost, and tucks himself away discreetly in a corner as a chilly breeze blows across the patio. Unexpectedly, I identify the unmistakable tones of Essex drifting over from my left, and turn to see a couple of bubbly young women greet the Topman-clad Londoner who has just entered the café to my right. All of these diverse characters sprinkled among Bogotá’s ‘elite’.

I notice the immaculately dressed and flawlessly accessorized ladies, most of whom carry handbags whose brands would be instantly recognizable anywhere in the world. Their hair is either tied back into a chic bun or worn loose; long, black and straighter-than-straight. I look down slightly self-consciously at my own hair, and images of hedges and Bridget Jones in a speeding open-topped convertible fleetingly cross my mind.

Sat on the border of the patio and the inside of the café, I am able to enjoy the sporadic warmth of the sun as it darts in and out of the clouds. Glancing around I see that I, along with Essex-Tones and the waitresses, am one of the few women that has deigned to enter this café in anything other than heels. Ballet shoes with socks, to be precise. #fail. A majority of women in Bogotá wear heels. Image and appearance are of utmost importance in this society, where social status, background and contacts are the fairly well-known and accepted keys to success. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”… this phrase is extremely pertinent to Bogotá ‘high society’.

How do I fit into this society? I have discovered that, by being a foreigner, I can be forgiven for most things; nonchalant dress sense, a lack of heels, unstraightened hair.. people seem to accept that I am from a different culture and therefore exempt from adhering to the expected social standards. In Bogotá, it is common to pigeon-hole and categorize people according to their social and educational background, area of residence, what their parents do, the people with whom they associate. Everyone is neatly defined, and nobody will stray from their category. But as a British gringa, I am pretty much free to be who I want to be; I’ll open my mouth and immediately be forgiven for all of my faux-pas. I realise I’ll probably never again consider buying a Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors or any other branded accessory, because of what these things represent in Bogotá; privilege, pretentiousness, estrato 6.. There are many status symbols… brands and consumer goods and real estate, which perpetuate the social divisions in this society. I conclude that the lack of social cohesion is this city’s biggest issue, and that if this were resolved, Bogotá would be a much more pleasant city to live in.