Some Día de la Mujer gifts I received from my students. Candy just for existing? Sure, I'll take it.

Thursday, March 8^th, was International Women’s Day, a holiday celebrated both officially and unofficially in countries across the globe – although, oddly enough, I’ve noticed that it doesn’t seem to be particularly popular in the United States. Here in Colombia, it’s celebrated as a sort of combination of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, with women receiving presents, flowers, candy, cards and constant wishes for a “Feliz día” (happy day).

I wrote about my personal feelings and impressions of Día de la Mujer on my own blog, so here I’m going to focus instead on some of the reflections it inspired on the state of women and women’s rights here in Colombia. Latin America, like basically every other region of the world, doesn’t necessarily have the best record on women’s rights. The combination of strict Catholicism in many places, machista culture and a strong adherence to traditional gender roles, particularly in rural areas, has created an environment that, until very recently, allowed limited options for women.

I’m not saying that all women in Colombia are housewives or cooks – and many of the ones that are do so by choice, rather than a lack thereof. There’s definitely a lot of space in Colombian culture for successful women, and despite the historic basis of machista culture (which is still alive and well, don’t worry), there does seem to be a healthy amount of respect for and appreciation of strong, accomplished women here. For example: When the former mayor of Bogotá was suspended in 2011, the president of Colombia chose a Harvard-educated female economist to serve as acting mayor until the end of the term. There are women serving in high levels of the government, powerful female lawyers and many female leaders of NGOs. As of last year, 13% of people in governing bodies were female – not anywhere close to 50%, of course, but sadly a much higher percentage than in many other nations.

However, this doesn’t mean everything is just peachy. The 2011 Global Gender Gap Report, which measures gender inequality in areas like salaries, work opportunities, education, health and other factors, ranked Colombia 80^th out of 135 countries – a significant change from its 2010 position in 55^th place, and the single biggest drop in Latin America. According to the report, this was based mostly on a huge decrease in women’s earned income, especially compared to men. A recent report by an investigative unit of the National Police found that, on average, a woman is assaulted every 38 minutes in Bogotá – and that barely 42% of women report cases of abuse to the authorities.

Whenever you hear anyone extolling the myriad virtues of Colombia, the beauty of Colombian women is always extremely high on the list (especially if the speaker is a straight dude). Far be it from me to dispute the accuracy of this description – Colombian women overall are seriously gorgeous, enough to make even a nail-biting gringa consider getting a manicure – but I think until the country focuses on promoting the accomplishments of its women, rather than their allure, there’s still a lot of progress to be made.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Women and men across the country held marches and demonstrations on Día de la Mujer to advocate for women’s rights and to raise awareness of the need for change. Hundreds of women marching in Medellín chanted “Take your rosaries out of our ovaries,” and a Bogotá-based lawyer told news organization Colombia Reports, “It is not the day of the woman, it is the day of women’s human rights.” The president of Colombia recently signed an agreement pledging to create publicity and awareness campaigns across the country to advance women’s rights – as with most political actions, it remains to be seen how successful this program will be.

It’s inspiring to see how people and organizations in Colombia are using March 8^th as a platform to advance women’s rights campaigns, but it’s important to remember that one day is not enough. As a female traveler, I want to live in a world where I can feel just as safe as a man, no matter where I go – my physical and mental safety should not be affected by my gender. Even more so, I would love to someday feel that, no matter where I traveled, I could meet women who have had the same educational and professional opportunities that I’ve had the privilege to pursue. We’re far from perfect in terms of women’s rights in the States (hey, Rush Limbaugh!), but at least I’m legally allowed to drive myself to the grocery store.

So: one day down, 364 to go!

Natalie Southwick volunteers as an English teacher for WorldTeach in Bogotá, Colombia. For more on Natalie’s adventures in Colombia, check out her blog.

On the surface, the public and private schools don’t seem so terribly different. The layouts are similar, the student population is about the same size and the uniforms are exactly the same. But once we began to scratch the surface – to speak with the English teachers and visit a few classrooms – the vast gaps between the two became painfully clear.

Most of the students could barely manage to put together three words in English, much less understand us when we introduced ourselves. Even the majority of the English teachers struggled to hold a conversation in English. Of course, I have no doubt that they’re excellent, committed teachers, and this has more to do with Colombian teacher requirements than any sort of personal shortcoming, but the result is that the students in these schools simply don’t have the opportunity to progress as far in English as the students in my school, who are learning from my excellent, basically fluent co-teachers.

And that isn’t even mentioning the social issues. These schools are in bad neighborhoods – the kind of places that elicit gasps from Bogotanos when I tell them that I visited there. They’re located in the distant southeast of the city, so far up the mountains that visitors can practically catch the clouds in their hands (one neighborhood is actually called Entre Nubes – “between the clouds”). The people in these communities are in the very lowest socio-economic strata of Bogotá – many of them displaced persons who’ve fled from the civil conflict in other parts of the country.

One school has altered its schedule to keep high school students from having to walk home in the afternoon, when there’s too much gang activity in the streets to ensure their safety. In another school, I met Miguel, an amazing kid who spends his Saturdays walking for two hours each way to take a free university-level class in the northern part of Bogotá, because he and his mother don’t have enough money for him to take the bus.

These are not excuses for not doing homework. This is real life.

Now, granted, my school is not without its challenges. There are still classrooms stuffed with 35 students, serious social and family issues and chronic shortages of just about everything. But it’s a different world up there on the mountain, where those kids will be lucky just to graduate from high school in one piece, or at all. Where they don’t have the luxury to think about how bilingualism will qualify them for more jobs. Where just having a job is enough.

I love my school, my students and most of my co-teachers, and after just a month here, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. But it’s difficult and frustrating to think about how much deeper the need goes in other places, how much these other schools could desperately use more support, more resources, more everything.

I think that most of us who choose to work as volunteers do so at least partially as a result of some innate desire to help, a compulsion to do something when we recognize need. I realize that the work I’m doing at my school is important and I can already begin the see the impact it’s having, but there are some days when I can’t help thinking about the other schools, far away to the south, and their students – who, with the exception of geographic factors, are no different from my students – and the perfectionist and idealist in me can’t help but feel like I could be doing so much more.

The truth is, in the world of non-profits and volunteering, we could always be doing so much more. There is always another civil conflict, another unequal education system, another child trafficked across borders. We will always be capable of doing more. While I believe it’s crucial to maintain this perspective and to seek out places where we can be of service, it’s also essential to remember that each of us can only work with the tools and opportunities we have or create for ourselves. None of us can take on all of the world’s challenges alone – but, for the sake of kids like Miguel, we can keep trying.

Natalie Southwick volunteers as an English teacher for WorldTeach in Bogotá, Colombia. For more on Natalie’s adventures in Colombia, check out her blog. And to read more about challenges in Latin American schools, take a look at “Money Matters: An Awkward Request from Students” by Kimberly Friedland, “Small Frustrations and Big White Elephants” by Nereida Heller, or “La Vida: Teaching English in Quito, Ecuador” by Philip Dixon.

It looks like this at some point pretty much every day in Bogotá

“So, I’m actually moving to Colombia to teach English for a year.”

“Congratulations! That’s so exciting! You’re going to love New York!”

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I had some variation on this conversation during the last few months of 2011. Needless to say, the reaction changed once I explained that my destination had a different vowel, different language and a bit of a different reputation.

But here I am, a few months later, about 2500 miles south of Columbia-with-a-u, in beautiful, polluted, bike-friendly, congested, diverse, sprawling Bogotá, Colombia. I’m currently six weeks into my 11-month commitment with WorldTeach, a U.S.-based organization that sends volunteer English teachers all over the world.

I work at Colsubsidio CEIC Norte, a small-ish school in the northern part of Bogotá, where I’m expected to magically teach English to a population of almost 850 students. I have yet to explain to my supervisors that my magical skills end with my ability to accidentally jinx my favorite sports teams, but in the meantime I’ve been busy falling in love with the city, the food and, most of all, my students (in a totally platonic way! Calm down, FBI representatives).

Almost without fail, every Colombian I’ve met has asked me, “Why Colombia?” People here are acutely conscious of the image many foreigners have of their country – an outdated image, sure, but a stubbornly persistent one. Why, they want to know, would Americans willingly choose to leave their homes and friends and family to move to a country that many people associate with drug cartels and violence?

It’s hard to explain just what drew me to Colombia, rather than the other Spanish-speaking countries with WorldTeach programs. For now, I’m sticking with some combination of “I love the accent” (true), “I heard it was beautiful” (also true) and, if I’m feeling particularly honest, “I wanted to travel somewhere different.” Translation: I didn’t want to be just another face in a crowd of gringos.

Though Colombia is slowly sneaking up on the tourist radar, I’m still the first American many people here have met. And while sometimes that makes me feel like an unofficial ambassador (who’s expected to answer questions like, “Can you describe the American educational system?”), I’m kind of okay with it.

And for the record: New York pizza may be famous, but Bogotá pizza isn’t half bad. And it’s definitely more affordable.

This is Natalie’s first post on La Vida Idealist. Natalie just began work as a Volunteer English teacher with WorldTeach in Bogotá, Colombia. To hear more about her experiences, check out her blog!

It’s so wonderful to have old friends visit!  Their impressions of my life here, and my concerns over their comfort, are illuminating.  Yesterday, my twilight bus ride through Centro’s Friday market seemed fresh.  Individual people shimmered against the background of a city I have been riding through for six months.  I anticipated how my friends would see these scenes —shirtless young men steering fruit-laden donkey carts;  cheery, aggressive bus drivers; beggars and pedestrians with grotesque physical deformities; clumps of lovely, aimless school girls —and they looked new to me. New, in a different way.  Because I finally realized yesterday that I’m starting to know this city.  Life in Barranquilla has been becoming unremarkable to me without my even noticing, and that comfort (dare I say grace?) is something really remarkable.

Sonja and Josh are not impressed by the moldy frying pan I offered as a simmering apparatus.  But they were blown away by the beauty of Parque Tayrona.  They danced salsa in the street last night at La Troja, and today we gave some historical perspective to their trip with a visit to El Museo del Caribe.  As their host, I am luxuriating in the fact that I have plenty to please a couple of guests with here.  As a visitor to the city myself, I thank my friends for reminding me of the beauty of my Colombian home.

Eliza is currently an English professor for WorldTeach at Fundación Aliarse in Barranquilla, Colombia. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

I was never much a fan of the ‘host family’ idea. After all, I live alone in the United States and quite dig having my own, well, digs. Breakfast in my skivvies, sometimes lunch and dinner too, is hard to pull off with my own family around, not to mentioned strangers. So, when World Teach informed us we’d be living with randomly-selected families (random in the sense that no personal information had been used to match us to a suitable family) I was shivering in my flip flops.

I only lived with my assigned host family for a month before seeking my own studio closer to school. Now, I live alone and am back to breakfasting in my boxer shorts. But, another volunteer’s host family has absolutely changed my time here in Colombia for the better.

Meet Libardo, Patricia, Enrique, and Andres. They are the host family every study abroad student and volunteer dreams of – great conversation, amazing food, and a constant eagerness to share their culture and their city with us. They’ve taken us on the back roads, to rooftops we never knew existed, to find the most amazing views of the skyline. They’ve introduced us to all the local dishes and taught us how to prepare them ourselves. Just today, they invited all the local volunteers for a day trip on Libardo’s company boat. We cruised the open waters surrounding Cartagena and lolled about in the turquoise waves near the Islas de Rosario.

As I watched them bounce around on the ship’s bow, I got that little jingly-belly feeling that I call my “wahoo rising” but others call “love.” How fortunate are we for the friends, families, and strangers we meet in our respective new communities, who toss us the life buoy when we’re thrashing around in a sea of newness? So fortunate.

So, here’s a big huzzah to L,P,E,& A, and all the other wonderful people out there who are helping us in our acclimations and explorations. Thank you. ¡Gracias!

For more posts on life with homestays while volunteering abroad, check out “Living with Locals, for Better or Worse?” by Becca Mondshein, “Department of Homestay Security” by Kent Green, “Homestay in Rio: an Ode to Ica,” by Mehr Amin,  or “For a House to Become a Home,” by Flora Lindsay-Herrera.

This is Brittany’s first blog post with La Vida Idealist. Brittany is currently an English professor for World Teach at La Universidad Tecnológica de Bolivar in Cartagena, Colombia.

In the northern part of Colombia, five hours inland from Santa Marta, you´ll find a small town named Valledupar. When asked if I would like to spend my three weeks of vacation with a Colombian family, I jumped at the opportunity. After all, that’s why people travel: to experience different cultures. Had I known what I was getting myself into, I might have opted for a shorter visit.

Three weeks with any family can be intense. Personally, I come from a very small family: I am an only child and I grew up with my dad and my aunt and that was about it. You can imagine the difference when I met Camila’s family. Or maybe you can’t. Every time the door opened, I was meeting a new cousin/aunt/uncle- a pretty stressful situation when you’re trying to make a good impression on everyone, using a language you haven’t fully mastered. On a daily basis, amid the seemingly never-ending rotation of whiskey bottles passed around amongst the men, cousins were fighting, children crying and Vallenato music blaring. I don’t think the decibel level dipped below that of any rock concert I’ve been to, but there were no speakers or amplifiers present: chaos.

I can’t say that I was welcomed with open arms. The only proper comparison for my experience with Camila’s four brothers, uncles, aunts and endless number of cousins would be to that of slowly walking through a gauntlet of 50 people, all armed with the same arsenal of wisecracks (mostly regarding my long hair), pausing at each person to allow them ample time to take their turn with the paddle. And they did take their turn, telling me I look like a girl and that I was more than welcome to sleep outside with the dogs. I am happy to say I took it all in stride. Sticks and stones, right? A trying experience which I am sure has made me stronger.

On a serious note, I have never experienced living in a culture with such a high level of machismo. In the family I visited, men make the decisions, men have multiple girlfriends, men beat their wives, and men drink and smoke. In this family, women take care of children, clean up after the men, wash clothes, cook, are forbidden from having more than one sexual partner (even after divorce) and if they do, they are ostracized by their own family. I was surprised and disappointed to learn that this type of oppressively patriarchal culture is so readily accepted and enforced not only by the men, but also the women. This experience has reinforced my belief that organizations dedicated to women’s empowerment such as Fundación Mujer are very much needed in all parts of the world. This has been a firsthand lesson in the strength of cultural ignorance. When abusive sexist behaviour and attitudes become widely accepted as a norm in a given culture, I can see it being very difficult to change that culture. It is not likely that an outsider will have any success in altering local opinion or action; it is only the oppressors themselves who have the power to change things. From what I observed, I do not see this realization taking place, at least not anytime soon. The next generation of ‘macho’s is already being trained.

For more on Sebastian’s observations of ‘machismo’ in Latin America. check out “Warning to Women: Thicken Your Skin, Machismo Awaits in Costa Rica.” At the time of writing, Sebastian Kindsvater was  living in San Jose, Costa and working as the Kiva Coordinator/Loan Officer for Fundacíon Mujer. He is currently currently working in La Paz, Bolivia with a Canadian nonprofit in rural finance.

Corporación Condor is an organization based in Bogotá, Colombia that travels to marginalized areas all around the country to provide free medical care. In this essay, the group of volunteer doctors and members of the Colombian Air Force traveled to Providencia Island for a marathon of surgeries and check-ups, helping a total of 1,280 people over a single weekend.

ngo profile no. 01 ::: corporación condor from leah on Vimeo.

Leah is currently living in Bogotá, Colombia working with various nonprofit organizations and taking photographs of everyday stuff. This multimedia is the first of a year-long series telling stories for 25 NGO’s all across South America. To see more photos from South America and learn more about the 25twenty-five project, visit her bilingual blog or join the Facebook page.

“COLOMBIA!” came the collective response.

I turned to the volunteer next to me, and whispered, “Did she really just ask what I think she did? ‘Where is the best country in the world?’”

“Yes, she did.”

I was totally confused – and it wasn’t just because my Spanish is bad. I was helping out at our quarterly Meeting of Refugee Women (Encuentro de Mujeres), and the last time I had checked, I was in a room full of women who had fled Colombia, never to return, because they feared for their lives or the lives of their families.

“They really idealize Colombia,” the other volunteer explained, seeing the look of puzzlement on my face. “They miss their home a lot.”

That, I understood. And it occurred to me that living as a refugee doesn’t immediately mean your life is better. The Ecuadorian government has a very permissive policy toward giving Colombian refugees legal status, and there are dozens of organizations that provide them with support – but refugees are still trying to build a life from almost nothing in a foreign country. Keeping that in mind, and knowing that these women can never return to Colombia, it made a little more sense that they would idealize the homeland that they can only visit in their memories.

And yet it’s difficult for me to fully understand how someone could love a country that is so mired in violence. I grew up in the late eighties and early nineties, and when I finally became cognizant of the world at large, my impression of Colombia was that the status quo there is total chaos. It always amazed me that there was any state at all, given the confusing welter of military and paramilitary and drug cartel-related fighting groups. How could you live a normal life in a country like that?

Obviously these women did. They had families, jobs, lifestyles. So probably the main reason I have this view is that up until now my primary sources of information have been the American news media outlets (which also downplay the role of the United States in instigating and perpetuating violence in Colombia). Having met and talked to our refugee clients, it is clear to me now that the reality of any nation is far more complicated. Yes, our refugee clients fled because their lives were hell – but home is home is home. Making snap judgments about a nation at large—even based on supposedly “informed” news sources—is just as misguided as making snap judgments about a person you barely know. To know the truth, you need to look at something from many different angles.

I wonder if George Bush ever met any Iranian, North Korean, or Iraqi refugees before declaring their nations an “Axis of Evil.” Even if his administration didn’t like their national governments, it was really a superfluous (and, in its superfluity, astonishingly ineffective) rhetorical gesture. No whole country of people can be entirely evil – just like in the case of Colombia, no whole country of people can be entirely violent.

The difficulties of leaving, captured in Colombian graffiti.

Field work requires comfort with transience. Many development workers parachute into places, build their lives from scratch, weave themselves into communities and are subsequently yanked away, to a new project or some other life demand.

As I wrapped up my last workshop for women ex-combatants and victims of conflict in Colombia, discussing community organization strategies for sustaining the impact of our gatherings, the women had one question: “When are you coming back?”

The truth is that I do not know. My fellowship requires that I design and implement projects in conflict and post-communities worldwide, always charting new ground for myself, veering away from the familiar. If love for the community and the project were enough, I would not have left Colombia yet. But for now, I boarded a one-way flight with no firm plans of return. This begs two questions: First, how do field workers relate to their projects once they are no longer on the ground?

There are transitional mechanisms that can sustain impact after formal project completion:

• Training community leaders in conducting a version of the project in the future, thus multiplying its outreach effects;
• Compiling archives of materials and strategies used to preserve institutional memory;
• Establishing monitoring & evaluation systems to gather data and discussing future changes and applications.

The second question is more introspective: What role will this project continue to play in your life after your departure? Was it a chapter in which you gained experience and gave a bit of yourself? Was it a stepping stone to a continuing project? Was it an escape from another world? Trying a new career? Confronting a fear? Do you plan to come back? Explaining that “this may have been it” to project beneficiaries is always hard; it creates feelings of abandonment and sadness in all of us. Somewhere far away, another community awaits your ideas and your service. Once you embed yourself within it, what role will this community continue to play in your heart?

How do you deal with the emotional and professional consequences of leaving a project? In what form do you stay involved?

Following Colombia, Roxanne is now in Guatemala. For a sneak peek into her observations,  follow her on Twitter or read more thoughts about impact on her blog.

Company in the indigenous village, Amazon

In an indigenous community of the Amazonian rainforest, the line between family and community becomes blurry. The  village consists of five inhabitants, all of whom are related by blood or marriage.

Every November, tribe members flock to the maloka, the hut-like structure that houses activities from food production to celebrations, to give thanks and remember their ancestors. Part of the ritual involves jumping on a log decorated with the painting of an anaconda, creating a sound so formidable that it echoes through the jungle to Leticia, the small Colombian port on the banks of the Amazon. During the rest of the year, the sounds of the jungle are interspersed with salsa tunes from a battery-operated radio, the mumblings of a parrot and the conversation five people can create.

Salento, Zona Cafetera

Wedged between a cloud forest and a valley of wax palm trees, the highest palm trees in the world, lies Salento, a village of no more than 4,000 permanent residents.

It is possible to walk and feel like you have seen every face before. 4,000 people in Salento can create the kind of vibrancy that is missing from a university campus on a snowy February Monday morning. A couple is dancing in the middle of the main square, men are playing chess by the church, two younger boys strum a guitar by an arepa stand. Salento is tucked away in the Zona Cafetera in such a way that it remains unknown to many travelers. In this quasi-isolation, its residents seem to live in bliss.

View from the coffee finca, Salento

Coffee finca

At the coffee finca, the bean tastes as sweet as a blueberry when picked directly off a tree. Five men work here without many modern amenities. Peeking into the lifestyle of a coffee farmer or a man in his mid-70s living in an Amazonian indigenous village makes one feel privileged and voyeuristic at once, as if you are experiencing a slice of the world steeped in beauty and at the same time invading a sacred space with curiosity. And yet, one wants to ask:

“Do you feel like you are missing anything? What do you long for but do not have here?”

In Salento, the men at the coffee finca laugh nervously and respond “Girls. Company. Someone with whom to dance rumba.”

In the Amazon, the 22-year-old son of the Chief of the tribe says he cannot think of anything – but quickly adds, “It is nice when people come to visit. It is nice to talk.”

Life in conflict and post-conflict zones can be isolating, nostalgia-inducing, lonely. Few are immune from the yearning for companionship, from the aid worker to the indigenous Amazonian. The stoicism and self-sufficiency of Salento or the Amazon are one charmed glimpse into navigating the solitude.

Roxanne is currently designing and implementing projects in communities of conflict worldwide. For more about her experiences in Colombia, check out her blog.