Public Nudity

Pubic nudity in Medellin is not the taboo that it is in the States.  On any given day you can witness several different displays of nudity.  Where one would receive a ticket of indecent exposure in the States it is just a common necessity that doesn’t even receive a second glance here.

Women completely pull out a boob on the metro to breast-feed.  I am all for a woman’s right to breast-feed in public, though taking your boob out on a metro calls for a second look.  But that doesn’t even scratch the surface.  On our walks home there is always at least one taxi driver pulled over, with his hazards on, urinating in our bushes.   I have seen men creatively finding a restroom in about every inch of the city: a tree, a bush, a trashcan or even a Botero sculpture.  They don’t stop at public urination, although it is less common, I have been witness to others defecating in the middle of the city streets.  Imagine you are walking along a crowded metropolitan street. People are shoulder-to-shoulder trudging by: shopping, heading off to work, or running errands.   You take a moment and glance around to see a woman just whip down her pants and get some of her own business done, right in the middle of everything.  No one even stops to look! 

We also live next to a rancher that strips down every day to take a bucket shower in the middle of his field.   I would say that it is one of the harder things to get used to here and it is a constant reminder that we are not home.   We have to watch our step as soon as we leave our house. Is that puddle just collected raindrops, or something more?   I don’t take the risk!  I wake up every morning to look out the window at the beautiful landscape that surrounds us.  As my eyes move down the mountains I see a man butt naked in the center of the field and I say “I don’t think I am in Kansas any more!”