floundersgreatadventure

The above picture is typical of the view from the train from Bello to Medellin while traveling along the river. Yes that’s a homeless man living I a storm drain the only thing you don’t see is the tons of garbage along the river. Yesterday we went into Medellin to see a live nativity pictures are on Facebook, but the trip was sad because of what you see on the way. on another time we had been Christmas shopping with Ruby’s son John in Medellin and as we were driving back I saw all the homeless people living on the median. I said to John alcoholism is a very destructive disease; he said they weren’t drunks they were mostly addicts. When he said that I looked again and was amazed if these hundreds of people are all addicts then the drug problem in Medellin is beyond epidemic it’s something even more horrible. It means that drugs are easier to get then candy and are probably cheaper I have no idea what they could do to stem the tide of this disaster or if the people in charge really want to. After all it keeps all these homeless people mellow so they aren’t going around and asking for aid or housing. Two things about Medellin it’s a beautiful city but it has problems that symptomatic of the whole country one is extreme difference in wealth from the wealthy to the desperate. If they were to start building rehabilitation centers for all these addicts they would have to build high rises there that many of them. I think the government should start treating them and the other homeless first not by putting them in jail but by putting t them to work cleaning up the river bank and the neighborhoods surrounding it. I don’t mean gentrification where the homeless are just moved someplace else and the rich move in I mean help them make the areas better and help them in improving their own lives. I wish I could get some pictures to show you but its really difficult and not that safe, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Colombia.