...hard path of change....

ok well first i want to mention, my spanish grades, luckily, were not reflective of how i felt the exam went, in fact, i got a lovely 4.5 of 5.

now this entry has a few points to it, the fist being that it marks a mile stone for me. i watched a documentary recently and understood a good 90% of what was said/discussed. For me this was as fantastic as the topic was sickening.

the programm is called 'espiciales de pirry'. the programme is colombian and pirry is the guy that investigates and presents the show, similar to the likes of 60 minutes etc. the subject of this particular episode was luis garavito.

garavito is a colombian serial killer who has possible the most viticms of any killer in the world, other than war criminals.

while having only admited to crimes comitted to just under 140 victims, he is being investigated regarding another 172 and the authorities and other belive there to be be many more than this. garavito is aptly known as 'le bestia' or in english 'the beast'.

he is one of the worlds worst peadophiles and his crimes involve raping, tourturing, killing and then dismembering children betweens the ages of 6 to 16. his victims were mainly poor children or street children, and he would lure them with small amounts of money or gifts.

so while he is a horrendous human being my issue is the following:

colombian law has not 'life' term and states that you can only be sentanced for the worst of the crimes comitted. therefore, while he has admitted to 140 killings, which in most other countries would earn you 140 sentances to be served end on end, he only recived a sentance for 30 years.

on top of this, as he helped the police in locating the bodies of these vicitms and many of the addional 172 he is being investigated for, he had his sentance reduced to 22 years. furthermore tit is likely he will be released in 3 years due to good behaviour, having served less than 15 years.

due in part to pirry's investigation this has lead to a change in sentancing laws here and while this is a step in the right direction, ufortunately will not affect garavito as colombian laws are not retrospective.

pirry spent many months preparing for the interviews for this episode in part with the hope he would get some new information which would be able to be used to charge garavito for new crimes as double jeporady means he cannot be re-tried for the same crimes more than once. however to my knowlege nothing new surfaced.

everyones worst fears are that he will return to previous habits once freed. pirry's documentary showed garavito to be void of any compassion or acknoldgement of what he did was wrong, he even mentions he wishes to run for government on his release. he takes no responsability for his actions and blames the children, and his own experience of being a victim of sexual abuse, although there are many out there who have been victims and do not go on to rape and kill over 300 children.

all expert opions, agreed that he is not reformed and that it was almost impossible that he ever would be.

the only saving grace is that here in colombia, there is no doubt he will be shot once released, i don't even think it will necesarily be by a family member of a victim. he is loathed here by all.

...lost in the floods...

Ok, so first an apology. as pointed out (yes by you paige!) i have been less than attentive to my blog, me thinks i got a bit washed away in the wet season here, on record as the worst ever, with hundreds of thousands displaced and millions of dollars of damage. so the first thing i have to share with, which follows on nicely from my last post, is my latest spanish exam.

well it didnt go quite as hoped, in fact after having completed it (and several times during) i hung my head in my hands in absolute shock and shame. now, while the exam really isnt all that important, i still wanted to do well for myself and to have hard proof that my spanish actually was quite good (as i had been telling myself) however it looks like i was perhaps a bit ahead of myself. the 'listening' which i was dreading, was infact a lot better than i thought, and then 'grammer and vocab', much worse. the 'writing' was as always my favourite, but didnt have as much time as i would've liked, and the 'reading comprehension' sort of just sat itself in the middle, not sure i hated it, not sure i loved it. and ofcourse at this stage it really is all speculation, and one (being me) can only hope that perhaps it wasn't all that bad, and and really, my spanish is very good........ this one i will defintely update you on (unless ofcourse i was right and it was as much of a disaster as i thought).

secondly, we have no had our 'new' puppy for a good couple of months, possibly another reason i have let the blog slide, far more fun to play with a super cute beagle named puku than try and think of something to write which will hopefully be amusing (very hopefully) and informative. he was gifted to us by the man (name unknown..... likely to be andres, jose, juan or something to that nature) who house the fighting cocks, chicks and hens at our place. lukily puku has passed he stage where he needs to knaw on something (anything) continuosly, and he now sticks to the odd rumble with junior (the big dog) or terrorising our other dog (whom i call 'puppy' or 'the other one' or 'the middle one' as his name seems to be unknown, or perhaps i just foregt it) and the new kittens, also gifted from the same unamed man perhaps a month ago. His other favourite past time is sleeping in the wardrobe on my shoes, which up until last night was ok, then he threw up on them, now hes very much in the dog box and out of the wardrobe!

well i will be blogging again shortly, honestly, but int he mean time its back to work.....