What people are talking about
Now that the talk of war is over, conversation has drifted to the next major topic: the building of a supermarket at the bottom of the road. The work started 6 months ago and is due to finish today.
Shopping in Medellín is not for those with fluttering hearts. Olwen either goes to the city centre which can feel like a crowded London underground after a bomb's gone off. She loves it, I find I need one hand on my wallet, one on my hat and one on her. Or we can go to a sumptuous suburban shopping mall which seems to have a strict dress code: only the fashionable may enter.
There is also a chain of supermarkets throughout the city called, Éxito, literally "success". Here clothing, computers and cauliflowers are stacked high and we're told, sold low.
It´s an Éxito that is being built locally at the corner of a major traffic-jam area. Everyone is delighted and sees it as part of the city's modernization. Few think of the pollution, the effect on local trading and the problems of monopolization, except, of course, mad foreigners.
And another outsider once commented about "Not living by bread alone". We can't wait for it to open.
Photo: Éxito sign going up backwards
Shopping in Medellín is not for those with fluttering hearts. Olwen either goes to the city centre which can feel like a crowded London underground after a bomb's gone off. She loves it, I find I need one hand on my wallet, one on my hat and one on her. Or we can go to a sumptuous suburban shopping mall which seems to have a strict dress code: only the fashionable may enter.
There is also a chain of supermarkets throughout the city called, Éxito, literally "success". Here clothing, computers and cauliflowers are stacked high and we're told, sold low.
It´s an Éxito that is being built locally at the corner of a major traffic-jam area. Everyone is delighted and sees it as part of the city's modernization. Few think of the pollution, the effect on local trading and the problems of monopolization, except, of course, mad foreigners.
And another outsider once commented about "Not living by bread alone". We can't wait for it to open.
Photo: Éxito sign going up backwards
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