The sleeping city girl is awakening
After an approximately ten hour bus ride with the AC on full blast that successfully managed to overpower any attempt my body made to comfortably and warmly sleep, my teammate Janice and I arrived at the bus station in Bogotá around 8:00am. We got on a taxi straight to the place that I will now be calling my new home. I unloaded my backpacks full of everything I own including dirty clothes, books, hand-made lamp, pictures, letters, and sandals.
Now, I sit here in front of a monitor in the office/apartment, in la capital de Colombia where approximately 12,000 NGO’s are registered and where over 600,000 displaced people have settled in after fleeing conditions of violence in their native home. I have a grim on my face and my eyes are holding back tears caused by the nostalgia that I am trying hard to ignore. I spent almost six months in the community and did not anticipate how much a rural setting can change your senses and your thresholds. I am feeling a mix of emotions having just arrived into a new space where I will spend the second half of my contract with FOR. More so, there is combination of sadness and feelings of attachments my mind and heart have to slowly let go of while attempting to successfully transfer into a new mode of operation. Mostly because I left a place that is so different from Bogotá and my mind is having a hard time letting go of the smells, the voices, the animal sounds and those faces that stayed in the Peace Community. And I decide to feed my emotions even more by playing a CD that has a few recordings that a young girl from the Peace Community made for me as my “good-bye” present, or as she liked to put it, “Para que no se olvide de mi, tenga esto como mi regalo de despedida” (so you won’t forget me, here is a present). Track 1 is has Chayanne’s most cheesy song and Track 2 is Enrique Iglesias on the background and her 17 year old voice perfectly out of tune overpowering the melody of the Spanish artist. I listened to it, holding back my laughter as I imagine her dancing and holding a fake microphone pretending she is on national T.V. singing to a large audience. The best part of the CD is the second to last track where she decided to improvise and sing about me living in La Unión and how I had to leave but that we will always remember each other. It was so cute and funny that I honestly don’t understand how I can feel so much joy and sadness at the same time.
Cold walls and privacy
I also started rearranging the room that was recently Camila’s(FOR teammate) and Juju’s (her baby boy) nest for the past few months. It felt strange to actually have so much space available for my body and few belongings. It seemed too empty so I did the usual move-in routine and placed some pictures on the wall, decided that a plant would keep me company and burned some sage and incense to fill the space between the walls with a familiar aroma. Not to having AJ’s room next to me and not being able to hear every single sound that penetrated the wooden walls back in La Union felt awkwardly silent. I was going to be able to get a sense of privacy again…and that felt sort of strange combined with a sharp dash of loneliness.
I was putting my clothes away thinking about the fact that they will soon lose the moldy smell they picked up in el campo. After staring at the closet, I realized that my faded jeans, stained green yoga pants, and worn out FOR shirts were not going to cut it for the kind of engagements I would be taking part in. I could no longer get away with wearing any pair of torn up blue jeans, the faded drawstring peach colored pants that go back to two or three past FOR volunteers, or my ripped-between-the-crotch brown cargo shorts that go way back to South Africa. The realization that I had few clothes made me automatically think about urban life and consumerism. All of a sudden I am living in a big city and have the necessity to go shopping. I now need to look presentable and somewhat formal-at least for the formal meetings at the U.S. embassy or with representatives of the Vice-President’s office on Human Rights. Right???? Norms…and norms… and the battle of having the autonomy to represent yourself as best identifies your perception on life vs. the obligation of having to express those qualities that gain you respect in a world that judges by superficial measures.
Whether I want to purchase new garments or not, I do need to get a hold of a thick sweatshirt or long sleeve warm shirts if I plan to keep my bones warm. Bogotá is actually colder than what I remember it being back when I was here in November and my body is certainly having a hard time adjusting after living in Urabá’s humidity where I was sweating every other day. The weather in Bogotá sort of reminds me of Santa Cruz with the cloudy days and the cool wind that all of a sudden changes into a clear sky with a sunny afternoon. However, it is not so much of a cold breeze from the ocean and is more like the coldness trapped in a museum with an incredible mountain view.
Although the window in the living room in our apartment sometimes gets some warm rays of sun, it is not enough to warm up the wooden floors and space around my desk. It makes me miss the back porch in La Unión where I often times laid on the hammock and enjoyed the view of the big white puffy clouds that reflected sunlight across the green hills. There were some amazing days when I would also catch a rainbow in the sky or two, and it would all of a sudden rain while the sun was burning hot. I wonder if I will still be called La Negrita (the dark skinned one) from FOR when I go back to visit the community. While I adjust to the lack of heat, I will continue spending the days in the office typing away with cold fingers and sipping on hot tea and coffee. I will once again fall asleep listening to the wailing police sirens echoing a large city, that like the piano and Beethoven’s "Quasi una fantasia", they are inseparable from the realm where they can express themselves deceivingly effortlessly.
