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.

When I parachuted into Colombia after months of work in environments of modesty and reservation, I was taken aback by the abundance of unbridled affection. A walk down the street in Bogota revealed that Toto, this was not the Middle East any more. Couples here want to shout their love from the rooftops and, given the scarcity of tall buildings, they settle for walking attached to the hip and kissing goodbye with passion of “Gone With the Wind” proportions prior to the men’s departure for war. Pet names, such as amor (my love), amorcito (my dear love), hermosa (beautiful), preciosa (precious), and princesa (princess) are all terms of endearment decorating interactions from a taxi ride to a business meeting. A police sign featuring armed officers in uniform at the Pereira airport,  for example, replaced the o in “policia” with a graphic of a red, pulsating heart.

Love, faith and color in Candelaria, Bogota

Colombia, country of love. Alongside it: Colombia, country of conflict. I have come to Bogota to direct the women’s programming for a Centre of Reconciliation between former combatants and displaced victims of conflict. The curriculum of post-conflict reintegration draws on principles of conflict resolution, development, and women’s empowerment. While I have implemented a version of this program in numerous conflict and post-conflict environments worldwide, the women in my workshops here surprise me by revealing the beauty and harshness of the paradoxes of Colombia.

During a “rights education” exercise, which required reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and identifying an example of adequate fulfillment of each right in Colombian society and a case of its insufficient protection, the participants offered multiple examples of rights violations and dismissed my examples of adequate rights fulfillment with a resigned “this is not how things work in Colombia, princesa.” A different exercise, aiming at jarring the participants’ imagination about sources of happiness, asked them to define elements of a good week. The room flooded with examples of love. The next prompt was to make a ‘bucket list,’ naming activities in which the women would like to engage over the course of their life, places they would like to visit and experiences they would like to sample. The exercise virtually demands idealism; participants are encouraged to think of everything they could desire, regardless of its feasibility. Lists remained sparse. Conflict has a remarkable way of wiping hope for the future and one’s capacity to imagine life otherwise.

In the post (?)-conflict world of Colombia, memories of injustice and brutality coexist alongside manifestations of love. A commitment to peace and transitional justice on the part of some is coupled with a bombing involving strapping explosives to a 12-year-old boy perpetrated by others. Welcome to Colombia, country of contradictions.

Roxanne is currently a designing and implementing projects in communities of conflict worldwide. For more of her attempts to navigate the paradoxes of Colombia, check out her blog.

A friend was driving us back to Barranquilla from Cartagena, where I’d spent some of the weekend, and we decided to spot by a beach to see what it looked like — it was beautiful like so many beaches in Colombia, but this isn’t a blog about beaches. On the way out, we had an “orientation breakdown” and ended up taking a road that wasn’t the way we’d come. As the dirt road became worse and worse, we started to wonder how the car was going to make it out with five people in it, and when we came to a hill that I would have said needed a 4×4 before I came to Colombia, it was time for a friend and me to get out and see where exactly we were going. We ran up the hill and found someone working in the hacienda there — pretty much the only person we saw on the road. I asked him how the road to get onto the main road was and how far it was: I was told it was good and the main road was closed. Then I realized I was asking the wrong kind of question.

I’ve written before that almost every time we interview a microfinance borrower working as a Kiva Fellow in Colombia, we ask them what they think of their barrio and that the answer is normally that the barrio is “safe,” “quiet” or that the levels of muggings are “normal,” which often ends with a raised eyebrow back in the office. It’s not that I don’t trust our borrowers — I have no doubt that their barrio is safe for them but wouldn’t be for me — it’s more that their perspective is completely different and that more than often, you have to ask what other people think of their barrio to get a more individual answer.

Our journey from the beach was just another one of these cases. The proper question to ask was, “In this car, is it best to carry on this way, or go back the way we came?” It was better to turn around and go back.

Rob Packer is currently working as a Kiva Fellow with the Fundación Mario Santo Domingo in Barranquilla, Colombia. For more on his experiences, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Whenever I think of this, I keep thinking of the opportunity I’ve had over the last three months to speak pretty much nothing but Spanish. When you live in Barranquilla, a city that sees very few tourists outside of Carnival, you’re unlikely to find a gang of foreigners to hang out with: so much so, that on a recent trip to Cartagena, Colombia’s tourism hub just 90 minutes from Barranquilla, I found myself staring almost open-mouthed at all these people speaking English as their first language. To summarize, I really like speaking Spanish and one of the many reasons I wanted to come to Colombia was for its reputation as being one of the places in the world with the clearest forms of Spanish in the Americas.

Like all stereotypes, you can only take this so far. I personally find the Spanish of Bogotá to be quite clear in that they pronounce all of the letters. But what I’ve liked most about Spanish in Colombia is its enormous diversity in the country: from the Barranquilleros love-hate relationship with certain letters of the alphabet, the same letters that the Cartageneros seem to have ditched complete, to the raspy accent of Medellín, which I still have difficulties with.

The only complaint I have is to do with what to call other people. I learned my Spanish mainly in Mexico and Spain, where you refer to pretty much everyone with the informal form, tú. In Colombia, it’s a lot more complicated: tú reigns where I am in Barranquilla and there are pockets of vos (Argentine and Chilean forms) spread over the southwest and far northeast; but the strangest form to my ears is the way the supposedly clear-speaking Bogotanos and Santandereanos have to refer to each other. They use usted. Coming from Mexico or Spain, where you only really use usted when you want to be really, really formal with someone, it comes as a bit of a shock to find parents and children, and married couples talking like they’re in a costume drama. And one of the strangest things I heard was on the streets of Bogotá where a passer-by tried to calm a crying baby at a balcony by saying the unfortunately almost translatable sentence: “No llore, ya viene su mama.” It means “Don’t cry, your mother’s coming soon.”

Rob Packer is currently working as a Kiva Fellow with the Fundación Mario Santo Domingo in Barranquilla, Colombia. For more on his experiences, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.