Vol. I, Issue 1: REVIVAL AND FIRST CONTACT
In OÍSTE's first issue of 2023, Peace Corps Colombia volunteers share stories from their first months in country.
A note from the editors: Welcome to the first issue of OÍSTE redux. The original iteration of OÍSTE began as a WordPress blog for volunteers of Peace Corps Colombia to share anecdotes of experiences throughout service. Unfortunately, the pandemic halted its publication. For this triumphant return, we asked fellow volunteers to reflect on their first months in country; for some that is nine full moons and for others it’s a tad shy of five. In this issue, volunteers share stories about beauty standards, disappointment, racism, neo-cultural movements, and more. This newsletter will cut off in your inbox so be sure to click on the title to read it in full on-site! (P.S. Happy Birthday, Victoria!)
Life In A Training Town: Blind Leading the Blind / Holding Down the Fort
David Paulino and Victoria Casas, Palmar de Varela and Ponedera, Atlántico, CII-16
Upon committing to service as a Peace Corps volunteer, a series of milestones is immediately presented to you. Meeting your cohort for the first time at a hotel in D.C., moving into a host family's home for the first three months of training, and site announcement day — where you receive your permanent service assignment — are all important events in a volunteer's experience. Site announcement day is a day of high hopes, nerves, and even some dread. It is a day that exemplifies the end of training and the start of service. It is a day that gives you a better idea as to what the next two years of your life will look like. We were a swarm of questions and emotions. Which region would we be placed in? Would we be far from our friends? How would we get along with our new host families and communities? Still, we were ready for fresh starts. We were excited to get to know new communities, form new connections, and start our services in new places to call home. The day arrived and one by one, the names of our fellow volunteers and their new sites were called. Their pictures were scattered across a map of Colombia, pinned on new pueblos in the departments of Atlántico and Boyacá.
Finally, they called our names.
In June 2022, my cohort was sworn in, making CII-16 the first group to return to Colombia post-pandemic. I found myself feeling hollow as all of my cohort members and friends left for their new homes. My new home is not a new pueblo. It is a training town. In fact, it’s the one that I had lived in since arriving: Palmar de Varela.
At first it was difficult. That post-PST depression hit me like a truck. I’d be in my home for days on end, not wanting to go outside because I’d be reminded of members of my cohort. Savannah, who would call so that we could walk and catch the bus together. (When she says she’s leaving in three minutes, she means that!) Going to Soledad’s and listening to Don Jaime. Swinging by Maida’s for six p.m. yoga night (I would meditate). Wine and movie night at Kaela’s. Providencia for homework, Palmetto’s for chisme, Bobby’s for Gladys’ café con leche. Best was whenever we would cook for our host families and LaTesha would be making her mojitos (which always hit).
For the first couple of weeks of our three months of In-Service Training, I had a sense of dread. Thankfully, I had Victoria as the other volunteer selected to remain in a training town and guide incoming cohorts throughout their PSTs.
I was nervous to meet the new volunteers. I was just getting my feet wet as a volunteer. How much of a help could I be? Blind leading the blind. Nonetheless, CII-17 came and settled into their training towns. In the first couple of days, meeting them washed away my nervousness.
A piece of home came with this new cohort: three volunteers from New York. I never realized how much that could mean to me. Their presence reminded me of friends and family. Even though I haven’t been very homesick throughout service, hearing “Yuurr” or “Yo, I’m tight!” made me smile so much.
Being able to show them what I’ve learned was simply a fun experience: putting them on to all the spots in Palmar or Santo Tomas or teaching them dichos of the coast. Guiding them through experiences with their host families and seeing how attached they became was heartwarming.
Talking to them about my experience, both successes and failures, was revealing. Getting a glimpse of how I influenced their lives as volunteers was fulfilling. Them saying, “Yo, everyone knows you! I’m trying to be like you!” was exalting because I always felt I could do more. The new volunteers helped me be confident in what I had accomplished so far. I learned a lot by helping them and I hope that they learned as much as I tried to “teach” them. As a volunteer mentor, I went through a lot of emotions: joy, anxiety, eagerness, love, and, above all, gratitude. I am thankful to them for always getting weird. Above all, I am most grateful for Victoria. We didn’t know each other like that during PST, and she has since become my rock. I don’t know where I would be without her. Victoria, I am grateful to experience this with you.
The picture-perfect image I had painted of the next two years of my life was set aflame. I was confused, trying to make sense of what it meant while being keenly aware that my service would be different from those of my fellow volunteers. Upon swearing in, I would not be given a new site. Instead, I would be left behind in my training town as my friends went off to explore new communities. I plastered a smile on my face, accepted my placement, and spent the next few hours focused on learning more about my friends' new sites. It wasn't until later that evening when I was in the privacy of my room that I let the mask slip and finally allowed myself space to reflect on the day's events.
Honestly, I was sad.
Having spent the past few months living alongside my fellow volunteers, imagining life in town without them was near impossible. Ponedera was tied to memories of late-night dancing on Brent's patio with Laura and Brenda, last-minute work sessions with Ron and Lorenzo at my kitchen table, and evening drinks and burgers at Puerto Alegre. The cohort’s excitement over the next few weeks turned into my doomsday countdown. I would walk around my town already missing our days of training and replaying the best moments over and over again.
The morning of departure, I stood alongside host families waving goodbye as the bus left Ponedera. Afterward, I joined the procession back home, painfully aware that everyone else was moving on. I felt left behind, clinging onto the experiences of others to keep myself distracted from the fact that my first few months as a volunteer looked the same as the previous few months as a trainee. I was at a standstill, stagnant, unsure how to move forward and start viewing my site as my site. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one experiencing this.
I found immense comfort in sharing difficult emotions with David, who had been trying to process the exact same feelings. Knowing that there was someone else who understood the difficulties of remaining in a training town helped ease my pain. We would spend lunches airing out grievances, eventually leaving the table lighter and more optimistic. Our silver linings: We had built-in support systems from training host families, pre-established connections within schools and SENA, were a close distance to Barranquilla, and, most notably, we were perfectly positioned to welcome new cohorts of volunteers. Over time, we established routines and developed relationships that helped permanently cement us in our communities.
When September rolled around, we were ready to share our towns with the new cohort. The eldest child in me was excited for an opportunity to serve as big sister and guide to the trainees, a privilege that my own cohort did not have. As homesickness settled in, the new volunteers served as a much-needed reprieve to my advancing loneliness. I finally had English-speaking neighbors again, with whom I could plan weekly dinner and movie nights. Weekend morning dance classes with Yaurimar and day trips to neighboring pueblos and cities became the norm throughout their three months of training. With ease, David and I fell into a new routine as mentors, providing guidance when prompted, creating spaces to air grievances or process difficult days, and celebrate their successes. We loved seeing their confidence within the community grow as it also served as a reminder of how far we had come from PST. It was a new perspective we needed in order to appreciate our work and motivate ourselves to continue.
People always say you don't appreciate what you have until it's taken away, but we knew from the start that this experience would end with another group of volunteers moving to permanent sites and leaving us. At CII-17’s swearing-in ceremony, David and I sat in the back row, arm-in-arm, once again preparing to return to empty sites. While we were sad, we were better equipped to handle the loneliness we knew would come. Thankfully, knowing it would be another difficult transition, our communities rallied behind us and included us more in their daily lives. We also had each other and our weekly lunch sessions to fall back on. Though living in a training town has not been easy, I realize now why I have been placed here, and I am grateful for the opportunity to welcome and assist future cohorts of volunteers, so long as I have the pleasure of doing so alongside my friend David.
Letting Go of Independence to Live with a Peace Corps Host Family
Renée Alexander, Boyacá, CII-17
Note: an earlier version of this piece was published in September 2022 while Alexander was on the coast. She has since sworn in and moved to the Andean region.
When I decided to join the Peace Corps, I experienced a lot of anxiety about many things: moving to another country, being separated from my partner for more than two years, living in a tropical climate without air conditioning, needing to speak another language fluently, missing friends and family, and eventually integrating into a small community as — quite possibly — the only foreigner many residents had ever met.
The issue that brought me the most angst was the prospect of living with a host family. As a 53-year-old woman who has lived alone or with a partner for the past three decades, I value my independence. The thought of giving up so much autonomy and privacy was extremely difficult to accept, but due to safety and security issues I had no choice if I wanted to serve as a volunteer in Colombia.
I worried that my host family might be devoutly religious or might have young children — both of which I am basically allergic to. As it turns out, my apprehension was unfounded. From the first moment I met my host parents, I felt perfectly at home. Alexandra and Angel welcomed me warmly and helped me get settled into my private room, which features a comfortable double bed, a table and chair, a nightstand, a fan, and a screen on the window. Despite the fact that we are basically the same age, they treat me like the daughter they've never had.
Angel, 56, is retired. Alexandra, 46, is a teacher and tutor who helps local children with their homework before and after school. Their 23-year-old son, Eiker, is a chemistry teacher at a nearby high school and a Master's student at a university in Barranquilla, which is located an hour north of Ponedera, my host community. His brother, 20-year-old Angel, studies architecture in Barranquilla. Alexandra is a fantastic cook with an infectious smile and quick sense of humor. Angel Sr. is a gentle soul who looks after my safety, as well as Pondera’s six other volunteers-in-training. (Thirty-some volunteers are distributed among four local communities in Atlántico.) Angel Jr. takes after his father, exuding quiet confidence.
Eiker is the comedian of the family, constantly cracking jokes and finding fun things to do with me and my fellow aspiring volunteers. (We won't be official volunteers until we are sworn in after successfully completing 11 weeks of intensive training in language, culture, and technical job skills.) He has introduced us to his friends, taken us out to happy hours and discotheques, hosted a movie night in the living room (The Princess Bride/La Princesa Prometida — in Spanish with Spanish subtitles), joined us for a beginner dance class (salsa), and served as our chaperone for a community-wide dance party where we practiced our new salsa skills, mangled the merengue, and learned a little bit about champete, cumbia, and reggaeton. I haven't danced that much in years, and I've got the sore muscles (and hangover) to prove it.
Living with my host family is a sheer delight for which I am extremely grateful. It makes it a lot easier to accept all the help they give me — from feeding me three meals a day, making sure I am dressed appropriately before I leave the house, checking in with me regularly to ensure I get home safely from every outing, and helping me with my still insufficient but rapidly-improving Spanish. As one of my fellow volunteers-in-training, Han, pointed out, "We are completely dependent on our host families for everything. Honestly, I don't even know what kind of fruit juice I'm drinking during meals."
Now that I know how fantastic my host family is, I am already dreading the day — a few months from now — when I must leave Ponedera to begin my two-year assignment in another community, possibly in the Andean region. I will miss them madly and may not have many opportunities to visit with them. For now, I am focusing my anxiety on other challenges, including the new vocabulary we are encountering here in the Coastal region. I am learning to use adios as a greeting, menudo for small bills, and embuste rather than mentira to point out a lie.
Casa de Norriega
Bobby Richards, Ciénaga, Boyacá, CII-16
Querida Norriegas,
It takes a special family to welcome a complete stranger into their home for any amount of time and make them feel welcome. But it takes a really special family to welcome a foreigner who speaks a fraction of a percent of the language, is learning new cultural norms, constantly clogs the toilet, seemingly doesn't stop sweating, and makes them feel like they’ve lived together all their life. That is exactly what Angelica (mi madre), Gladys (mi abuelita) and Waldy (mi hermana) did for me when I lived in their casita throughout my three months of Pre-Service Training in Palmar de Varela. These three generations of Costeñas were patient, but never held back a good risa at my mistakes. They were kind, but never hesitated to point out when I was wrong. They were hardworking and always had a list of oficios waiting for me when I got home from a day of training. They were loving, but never bit their tongues if I was in trouble. They shared their life with me and always made me feel like un hijo y parte de la familia. From these three incredible women, I began to learn the language, laughed more than I thought possible, repeatedly practiced (but never mastered) la técnica apropriada of mopping, and stumbled my way through countless other lessons with a smile oreja-a-oreja knowing they had my back. I’m beyond lucky to have lived with these women and called them family. Whether it was sitting out front enjoying a patio evening chatting with vecinos, on the back porch practicing Spanish while folding a mountain of laundry, around the table for a meal, or in front of the TV next to Gladys watching her favorite reality show, a seat was always offered to me in la casa de Norriega.
Las extraño mucho y nos vemos pronto.
Tu nieto, hijo y hermano,
Bobby
Good Land, Good People
Fernando Garcia-Corrales, San José de Pare, Boyacá, Colombia, CII-17
It was on my first morning in San José de Pare that I witnessed the natural beauty of the site that I would be living and working in for the next two years. Having arrived at site the evening before, after sunset, it had escaped me at first. That next morning, I walked out of my house to a vast landscape with rising mountains in the backdrop of rolling hills, El Río Suárez cutting through the border between the departamentos (departments) of Boyacá and Santander, distant fincas (farms) adorned with Spanish tile roofs, sugar cane mills sending smoke billowing in the morning mist, and endless green as far as the mountains let you see. In this moment, I was reminded of a scene in the sci-fi movie Interstellar where the ground met the sky and Earth folded over itself cylindrically. From the look on her face, it seemed as if my sitemate Barb shared the same sense of awe.
As of 2022, Colombia is listed as the third most biodiverse country, only behind Brazil and Indonesia. Third place is clearly justified in San José de Pare. It’s a small town in the Andean region of Colombia with a little over 5,000 inhabitants. From word of mouth, over 70 percent of the population lives in the campo (field), where most of the town’s identity is rooted. Farmers primarily grow sugar cane yet coffee, yucca, oranges, and just about every fruit and vegetable can be grown on this land. Better yet, stable year-round temperatures mean that farmers don’t have to prepare for seasonal harvest shocks. From bell peppers that thrive in warmer climates (ideally from 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit) to potatoes that do best in cooler climates (ideally from 61-66 degrees Fahrenheit), the campesinos (farmers) always have harvest options. You can pluck clementines, lemons, and oranges from trees almost everywhere you go and no one chases you for stealing produce. Instead, if you ask for a clementine, they’ll give you a bucketful.
A few days after arriving at site, I visited a coffee farm to learn about the production process from seed to cup. The finca was owned by Barb’s host mom, Miryam, who is a hard-working mother of four with a family-owned coffee business. Many of the coffee producers from the municipio (municipality) are head-of-household women like her. These women contribute to a thriving agricultural sector while continuing to challenge the status quo of field work as male-dominated labor. Miryam’s coffee bean is graded an 85 (out of 100) on the scale developed by the Specialty Coffee Association and is considered an “excellent” “specialty coffee.” (For reference, the top-performing Starbucks house blend is graded a 63 on the same scale.) The soil and climate are major contributing factors to the quality of this bean. However, Miryam’s ability to produce a “specialty coffee” is mostly due to her and her cultivation team’s extensive research into soil health and their detail-oriented production process. The process of washing, peeling, drying, and roasting a coffee bean is incredibly meticulous.
Coffee is the attractive product in town, but the heart of the campo in San José de Pare is embedded in the sugar cane workers. Harvesting and processing sugar cane is one of the most labor-intensive agricultural jobs; workers endure long hours chopping cane with their machetes under the sweltering sun. Jose, a local councilman, invited me to visit a harvest and a mill where the cane is processed into unrefined whole cane sugar, or panela. It’s an industry where most wouldn’t last a week, but the workers take pride in their panela that is distributed throughout the Andean region. The sugar cane crop has withstood the test of time, and so have the workers who have carried San José de Pare’s economy on their backs for decades.
Recently, local farmers have begun experimenting with alternative crops to minimize their dependence on sugar cane. Don Chepe, a banana cultivator and association leader, is training other campesinos on how to enter his sector. Through his association, he connects farmers with opportunities and the knowledge necessary to begin seeding and sustaining crops. The day I visited his eight hectares of land, he had just returned from a three-day business trip in Bogotá and could not stand one more day away from his banana trees. There is a true love story between farmers like Don Chepe and their land, who see Earth as something to nurture, not something to conquer. This passion is common in San José de Pare where its residents’ selfless attitudes extend beyond the land they tend. For example, another community leader named Gerardo — who is one of the town’s few cultivators of bell peppers — is in the early stages of developing a project that would provide homes for 70 families and set them up with a partnered farmers’ association to help them create productive agricultural units. Both Don Chepe and Gerardo are finding unique ways to cultivate San José de Pare’s nutrient-rich lands while simultaneously establishing strong socio-economic foundations capable of fusing urban and rural interests.
Younger generations are an integral part of progress in San José de Pare. Opting out of traditional rural to urban migration trends, a group of recent university graduates have chosen to return home and apply their education toward improving agricultural practices, bolstering agro- and eco-tourism, and creating employment for future generations. Vivianne, an agricultural engineer, and Pedro, a regional author, grew tired of the city life and elected to come back to work alongside their pueblo (town). One day, they invited me to explore a network of caves in the municipio, and what was supposed to be a two-hour walk turned into an all-day hike, but that’s how life works out here. During our hike, I got the opportunity to learn about Pedro’s digital documenting project concerning the lives of local community members as a symbol of appreciation for the people and the history of un pueblo llamado Pare (a town called Pare). I also learned about Vivianne’s dream of founding a campo school in which she can teach local farmers organic methods of farming, the importance of soil health, and alternatives to GMOs and agrochemicals.
Throughout these field visits I learned about a wide variety of crops, farming methods, local projects, and dreams; yet one thing remained constant. They all invited me to share a meal with their families, have a beer, drink some coffee, and in most cases, all three. The generosity of the Pareños (inhabitants of San José de Pare) and Colombians in general is not only welcoming but inspiring. The joke around San José de Pare is that if you fall asleep in the streets, instead of getting all of your money stolen, you’ll wake up the next morning with interest. I have yet to try this, but part of me believes them.
Most of my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Community Economic Development sector is directed towards identifying and defining the assets of the community in which I will be working in and developing projects using the resources, connections, and skills that already exist. Sometimes an outsider’s perspective can help one see what has been there all along. San José de Pare is rich in opportunity, rich in land, but most importantly, rich in ambitious and selfless people that have a vision for the future of their pueblo.
UFO Hunters
Soledad Garcia-King, Turmeque, Boyacá, CII-16
My Black Face in White Spaces
LaTesha Harris, Úmbita, Boyacá, CII-16
As a Black woman serving in the Andean region, I spend a lot of time feeling humiliation.
I chose Colombia. It’s the country with the fourth-largest population of African descendants in the Western hemisphere because, in the 16th century, Spaniards captured Africans and brought them to the country’s coast to work mines and plantations. Because of its numerous slave settlements, the Colombian government never provided sufficient infrastructure on the coast, essentially restricting the movement of African slaves and their descendants. Today, Afrocolombians make up 25 percent of Colombia’s total population. They make up 90 percent of the coastal population.
As one of several billion victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, I interviewed for Peace Corps with hopes of living on the coast, serving Afrocolombians, and tapping into the global Black diaspora. I constantly dreamed of working in a town like San Basilio de Palenque, the first town in the Americas founded by escaped slaves to secure independence from Spain. I filled out a preference survey, I told everyone why I wanted the coast. I never imagined I would serve in the Andean region. (In fact, I spent half a month’s paycheck on breathable, tattoo-obscuring fabrics to prepare for two years of tropical heat.) I remember confused silence and incredulous looks when my name was announced as one of the volunteers going to the mountains. I smiled out of sheer disbelief. Eventually, the ceremony ended without a single member of staff correcting themselves and moving my little head to the coastal map. Fine, I thought, dream deferred, but what support system would I have in the whitest part of Colombia? When I realized I was the only Black person assigned to serve in the interior, I all but had a nervous breakdown. Was I not good enough — dare I say Black enough — to stay on the coast? I felt cheated. I felt like a failure.
I cried in front of multiple members of Peace Corps Colombia staff, praying that someone would see how much pain I was in and take me seriously. No one did. One white staff member said they understood me because they were separated from friends and couldn’t party with them on weekends during their service. Several others reminded me that I made a commitment to serve anywhere I was needed and that removing me from Úmbita would be unfair to a site desperate for my support. I could either get with the program or go home. In my first three months of Pre-Service Training, I suffered too much — I attribute this period of depressive isolation to a racist and unwelcoming host family — to throw in the towel. So I went.
Úmbita is a small valley that used to be ruled by the Muisca before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. The town’s name is Chibcha and means “your point, your summit, summit of the farmlands.” Due to its agricultural economy, Úmbita is an extremely rural municipality. Allegedly, there are 9,000 people in my town, but because only ten percent live in the center (a beautiful church, a few decent restaurants, town hall, several bars, two drug stores and other miscellaneous buildings restricted to five blocks) and we’re not allowed to ride motorcycles (the only way people get around in the mountains), I see the same 50 people every day. I have the most expensive bus fare (all volunteers receive the same amount for in-country travel, though costs differ widely between regions) and longest travel time, which means I am extremely isolated.
Here’s a sample of what being forced to stay “on” 24/7 looks like:
Spending my first month and a half in town being disregarded in favor of a white sitemate.
Being considered an unacceptable shade of brown because the last degree of coloring to be considered morena is sienna. I arrived to site during Petro’s historical presidential campaign, so everyone asked if I was his girlfriend, an offensive reference to Francia Márquez, Colombia’s first Black vice president.
Receiving questions on when I will marry el choconegro and bear his children. This man is the only person in town who is as dark as me. Once, with tears in his eyes, he told the story of how he had to escape Chocó due to gang violence and leave his family. My devastation was misinterpreted for romantic interest.
Walking down the street when two little girls run out their front door to point and shout: “Mira, mira, la negra! Es la negra!” Their parents scolded them. My host family didn’t even notice.
Listening to my students’ fathers tell me how much they love negras con colas ricas. (For the women, my curves are scandalous so my rapid stress-related weight loss is a popular topic wherein people express congratulations rather than concern.)
Smiling whenever my host mother laments how ugly my hair is to anyone who will listen.
Being considered unapproachable on the basis that I exist. If I am not smiling, people assume I’m aggressive, uninterested, or stupid.
Belonging to the racial minority of my cohort and receiving no support, instead experiencing constant microaggressions from white volunteers. (Lorenzo loves comparing the racism I experience to the tribulations of the fictional Indigenous Na’vi peoples whose land is colonized by evil sky people.)
It’s a universal truth that every town has a resident drunk. Even though he was born and raised here, mine is referred to as “The Mexican” because of his obsession with rancheros. I first met him in the middle of hiking Úmbita’s tallest mountain. He repeated “belleza americana” so I tried to explain that I used to love that movie until the allegations against Kevin Spacey came out. It wasn’t until he said “eres una negrita hermosa” that I understood. He was sober then and he told me I had a friend in him. When we met for a second time he, visibly drunk, declared me his querida negrita and tried to kiss me. I’ve been around the block, so I squirmed out of his grip with ease and went about my day. Later, my aunties told me I should’ve slapped him. For our third meeting, he found me in my uncle’s bar. Twice, he was removed for touching me. On his third attempt, he called me prieta linda and invited me to his home. After I said no gracias, he attempted to lift me out of my chair and pull me into him. Again, he was removed and when I told my host brother, he suggested it was my fault for not slapping him.
Safety & Security evacuated me and conducted an investigation that went all the way up to Washington. I was asked questions like, “How do you feel? How can we support you? Do you want to leave?” Honestly, I didn’t care that this happened. I’d spent so much time in the past five months being racially degraded in a place I am supposed to call home that I never felt a need to report this tip of the iceberg incident.
That all being said, I love Úmbita. I love my trails and I love my coworkers and I love my students. I demanded to stay. The same staff members who disregarded my concerns of harassment laugh about, what they assume is, my now-relinquished neurosis. The thing is, I can simultaneously enjoy Úmbita and feel that Peace Corps robbed me of a spiritually fulfilling experience. I have found my footing here, but there are days I can’t leave my room because I’m too anxious about what I will have to smile through if I do.
I am no stranger to challenge. But the hardships I face in the Andean region, especially as they compare with the fact that I could’ve served in an Afrocolombian site like the two Black volunteers in the new cohort who were placed in San Basilio de Palenque, are no learning experiences. I can’t change my skin color to be a good volunteer. Colombians see what they want to see and there are generations of racial tension clouding their eyes and minds. Even though we all accepted the same grueling roles, I shoulder additional burdens that my fellow white, especially male, volunteers never will. I am held to a higher standard and constantly surveilled. Fact: diversity among volunteers is important because we all bring different strengths to the work. Even bigger fact: the Peace Corps lacks inclusive programming and perspectives. They flatten and overlook how our backgrounds will influence service.
Peace Corps labels our labor as “the hardest job we’ll ever love.” I learned early on that this statement is corporate for “this work will drain you physically and emotionally and we can’t offer much institutional support as we churn out the next group of volunteers so kindly be a professional, keep it to yourself — especially if you’re a diverse hire — and smile for the cameras.”
A Volunteer's Guide to Running in Colombia
Maida Walters, Boyacá, CII-16
One paso forward, two pasos sliding back down the hill
If Sisyphus got to ditch the boulder and was instead forced to forever walk up a mountain side in Boyacá, his infinite struggle wouldn’t be much altered. In my first weeks at site, I tried day after day to fully run up one of the hills on the outskirts of town. Day after day, I rolled back down defeated.
At zero feet above sea level, Pre-Service (Running) Training in the department of Atlántico was almost ideal. The scorching heat and high humidity invalidated most of the day, but five a.m. runs were fast and flat with only the far silhouettes of mountains within sight.
The sudden shift to life at 7,000-9,000 feet brought with it lethargy, headaches, and nausea. In my case, even when my body finally adjusted to the high altitude, the sheer steepness of the mountain sides made my running slow and humbling.
But runners endure. And in enduring, lessons are gained and small victories are won. Whenever my pride took a hit as I walked up yet another hill, I knew I would return the next day to try again.
In trying again and again, I gained a few insights about running in Colombia:
Learn to speak dog
Oh hello, yes dog-dog, yes this is your home. Oh yes you are good at protecting it. I am just walking by, but yes what a good dog you are, very good, very pretty, very nice…
This incessant chatter continues as a snarling guard dog dances closer and then further away. I talk in English to the dogs, hoping that regardless of language they sense I concede to their infinite superiority in speed and strength. Usually this appeases them. Dogs seem to have the profound awareness that while a runner is fun to chase and bark at, they're not much of an actual threat. I’ve only resorted to stick waving with enough fake bravado to escape unharmed a handful of times.
It was through the relationship between running and dogs that I realized I had made my site into a new home. The task of knowing my community was fully realized the day I could identify every house where a perro bravo lives. Full integration came the day most barrio and campo dogs recognized me in return and their usual chase and bark routine had calmed to no more than a watchful gaze.
Bocadillo and other great sources of fuel
Someone told me that when Colombian cyclists first started competing overseas, in response to their excellent conditioning and success, European contenders lamented: “Those damn Colombians and their bocadillo and panela.” The sickly sweet guava paste makes an excellent fuel source and, at around 300 pesos, fits well within my paltry monthly cost of living.
Figuring out fueling for long runs is a personal endeavor for a runner. The body needs fuel for optimal performance on any distance over an hour. I personally made due with dissolvable tabs of electrolytes my parents sent me and store-bought gummies. Upon closer inspection, I realized the gummies were providing next to nothing in terms of calories or carbs. I ditched them for some expensive gels purchased at the Tunja Jumbo. Pre-long run food included two granola cookies purchased at D1, which I never wanted to eat again by the end of my training block.
Fueling is an evolving process. Bocadillo is in the lineup for the next marathon. PCMO-provided, berry-flavored hydration salts may also make an appearance. My advice: experiment until you eventually realize not much beats that damn bocadillo.
Honk twice for the profe out running
A week after the underwhelming Bogotá half marathon, a mix of loneliness, competitive desire, and sheer enjoyment of running amounted to a 15-mile run around my site. It was a Saturday with no previous plans, so I’d originally decided on going out for a slow ten. Mile nine had me crest a small hill overlooking town and around mile 11 I decided I would train for a marathon in the next seven weeks. I coasted back to town, picking up miles and riding the high of my new goal.
Running isn’t all that popular in my site and the final result — other than a marathon completed around Tibaná — was the absolute recognition as the odd profesora who liked to run a lot. Mostly I received motivating honks and waves from acquaintances passing by. With increasing frequency, I was asked why I run so much.
To students, the butcher, the store clerk, I always replied the same: “Me hace feliz.”
To everyone’s credit, they accepted this answer and gave a supporting “dale campiona” when they saw me out running.
Pals and cows
For many, running is a solitary hobby. It grants space and time for self-discovery. The mind, when left to wander and focus only on the forward motion of the body and the intake of oxygen, will make a small, novel connection. During a run, I sometimes uncover something I never knew before.
But running in Colombia has unearthed a wonderful new experience: running with company. From a fellow volunteer biking alongside me for 22 miles to a coordinadora driving and yelling encouragement during the course of a marathon, my new discovery is that while I appreciate the contemplative silence granted by campo cows, running provides a connection between humans that I haven’t often witnessed.
As I continue my slow uphill running and my close-to downhill falling, l may mostly be alone. But I am open to anyone who wants to trot alongside, so that we may both share the experience of running in Colombia.
Sizes, Beauty Standards, and Other Bullshit
Savannah, Boyacá, CII-16
I do, in some ways, feel I was lied to.
As an avid online shopper, I am no stranger to clothing size discrepancies from country to country or even brand to brand. However, on our training forum, when I was still in the United States and building my packing list, I asked if I — as a women’s US size 12-14 — would be able to find clothing in country that would fit me. Having already read the blog posts of other women from the United States who have lived in Colombia, I was very apprehensive. The results were mixed with some women having no issue and others having to turn to online shopping to find their size. Fortunately, on the forum, I was assured that I would have little difficulty finding clothes in my size: “There are women of all shapes and sizes in Colombia, after all!” I decided to pack lightly and only bring essentials as we were encouraged to do.
The only comfortable items of clothing I’ve found in the past seven months: one shirt, a jacket, a ruana (a wool, four-point, poncho-style overgarment traditional in the Andes), and a six-pack of men’s socks. I have been to three different well-known shopping cities for the sole objective of hunting down a pair of pants that I can button and breathe in. I have tried popular Colombian chains, tiny clothing stalls, and even American Eagle. What I’ve learned from these failed attempts is that Colombian sizes are smaller than advertised. I remember standing in a clothing store with my host mom and host sister, surrounded by three very kind shop attendants as they all tried to convince me that I could squeeze into a size 16. Despite their enthusiasm, the pants simply would not button. I asked to try on the only pair of size 22 pants I had come across. Everyone was sure that they would be too big but I insisted and, for the first time, I finally zipped up a pair of pants made in Colombia.
At first, I focused all of my frustration on myself and my body. As a woman considered tall in the United States, about 5’8” or 173cm, I have felt like a giant since I stepped off the plane. For reference, the average height of a Colombian woman is 5’2”or 158cm and the average height of a Colombian man is 5’6” or 168cm. With each pair of jeans I tried on that wouldn’t make it past my mid-thigh, a year of learning how to love my body flew out of the window.
When you begin your language and culture training, they warn you that, unlike in the United States, unwanted comments and jokes about weight are considered acceptable in Colombian culture. Learning that and living it are two very different things. The first person to comment on my weight was my host father on the coast. I was missing the comforts of home and had gone to the freezer to get a piece of Toblerone chocolate. As if called by the crinkling wrapper, my host father spawned in front of me and informed me that it was the reason that I was fat. As fun as that exchange was, I decided to finish my treat in my room. During training, I asked my Language and Culture Facilitator how to deal with these comments. They recounted a story about their own body image issues growing up and told me the best strategy in dealing with them is laughter. Clearly, the criticisms they received had been hurtful at some point even if they eventually grew indifferent toward them. If they consistently hurt more than half the population, why are these kinds of comments normalized in Colombian culture? I continued to hear similar remarks come my way from neighbors, host family members, and even strangers on the street.
If there’s one thing I love about the Peace Corps, it’s that you can count on your fellow volunteers to know exactly what you're going through. I spoke to multiple people, with varying heights and body types, about my frustrations and was surprised to find out that even our most petite volunteers were having similar problems. Nearly every female-presenting volunteer in my cohort has had some kind of observation, insult, or nickname about their weight thrown at them in the past several months. From what I’ve observed, Colombian women are no exception to this harassment. My host sister empathized with me when I told her about the difficulties I’d been having. Why was the only clothing available offered in sizes that didn’t reflect the diversity of bodies living in Colombia?
When talking about visible Colombian women, you may recognize the names Sofia Vergara, Shakira, or Karol G. All women who are well known for their status as entertainers but especially revered for their beauty and their curvy bodies. You may also recognize the names Paulina Vega (2014 Miss Universe), Zuleika Suarez (2014 Miss International first runner-up), Ariadna Herrera (2015 Miss Universe first runner-up), or Andrea Tovar (2016 Miss Universe second runner-up). These women are considered the quintessential standard, not the exception, of Colombian body image. With large breasts, large buttocks, and minimal body fat, these beauty standards are nearly impossible to achieve with even the strictest diet and exercise routine. One out of every 200 Colombians (83% women) have undergone some kind of cosmetic procedure with liposuction as the most popular in 2020.
I believe that clothing sizes are a reflection of the commercialization of Colombian women's bodies as they are sold in media and pageants to portray Colombia as a country of attainable beauty and allure, if only you diet or pay enough. As a tall, mid-sized foreigner, I will never live up to Colombia's standard of beauty and accepting this has brought me comfort. These expectations are set to an unattainable standard for almost every shape and size of woman: a reminder you'll find printed or sewed onto the inside seams of your clothes and always carry with you. For the next two years, it seems I am relegated to scouring the virtual depths of Amazon for my next pair of jeans.
Dog-Eared
Jeanett Jansen and Brent Soloway, Paipa, Boyacá, CII-16
Solstice
Lorenzo Boni Beadle, Cucaita, Boyacá, CII-16
We arrive at the weathered, cyclopean slope of los Cojines del Zaque before dawn. In the perfect silence of the early-morning darkness that entombs Tunja's periphery, we are joined by Muisca youth who collect scraps of garbage from all around us. Later, we learn that the municipal government declined a request to clean the archaeological site, instead only furnishing volunteers with a dumpster.
Watching them move to and fro, preparing for formal ritual, verges on voyeurism. There is a sort of cultural behind-the-scenes quality of forbiddenness adorning more concrete sensations like biting cold or the painful throbbing in LaTesha’s left foot. The proceedings are, objectively, mundane at this point, but still captivating as if we are privy to a rare arcane performance. We are the cool kids vibing in the shadow of recuperated monument chic, waiting to see something spectacular.
It is December 21st, the winter solstice and beginning of the new year according to the Muisca calendar whose stone instantiation we sit upon. A young Muisca explains they’re cleaning the site to ensure the next year is a good one.
The sun peeks at us from behind the mountain horizon as a long-haired, leather-jacketed man arrives — a colleague of a friend. He kneels before each of the two stone bases jutting from the rough uniformity of los Cojines. After he rises, he employs a green laser pointer to gesticulate across Tunja, sleeping below us, indicating alignments between the bases and various sites buried by post-Columbian urban development and how they correspond with pre-Columbian myth. By now a larger retinue of Muisca has arrived. They share chicha with us — an indigenous alcoholic beverage with ritual weight — and we indulge in small sips from the same bowl as the city begins to wake.
The clouds across Tunja are suffused with veins of magmatic sunlight that first blossom above the other side of the city before rushing towards us and intensifying until the sky is saturated with the orange-purple-red of creeping dawn. Patterning on the cloud layer fades as a piercing, singular fire dominates the horizon. Drums, flutes, whistles, and chanting in reconstructed Chibcha echo lightly around us — live instrumentation assisted by a bluetooth speaker with pre-recorded music — while the sun peers directly at los Cojines. When clouds eventually envelop the sun, the ritual proper begins.
We face each cardinal direction as a Muisca elder speaks in reconstructed Chibcha. She pours chicha on the ground after each recitation. She tells us that los Cojines is not los Cojines, nor is it a park as the children of surrounding neighborhoods believe (conversations with these children prove convincing to the contrary). She says it is a calendar that marks the end of the old year and the start of the new. We are standing on a ritual site with deep significance to her people.
A member of la Guardia Indígena de Tocancipá speaks before the assembled group. He says, that after 500 years, we are in the midst of an Indigenous rebirth.
The Muisca are — were, will be — a group Indigenous to what is now called the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, an expansive space in the interior of Colombia that, coincidentally, overlaps with Peace Corps Colombia’s new zone of operations. A romantic-extractivist logic propelled Spain into the Altiplano and other Latin American hinterlands, beginning with expeditions to El Dorado and culminating in brutal labor regimes co-extensive with sociocultural annihilation. In the case of the Muisca this experience was particularly acute: the obliteration so thorough that their original language — Chibcha — is lost.
A host cousin, Daniel, introduced me to this history in a conversation where he described it as epistemicide. The Spanish Empire violently extirpated the Muisca “way of knowing.” Since then, assimilation (imposed and otherwise) has made it increasingly difficult to distinguish “authentic” Muisca from the rest of the Colombian population that inhabits the country's central departments.
This is not to say an unbroken Muisca heritage was unable to survive, but rather that there is a reason the solstice speaker from Tocancipá described the ritual at the calendar as part of an Indigenous renaissance. A reconstruction of Muisca identity began in the 1980s — this process popularized the use of “neo-Muisca” as a name for people like those we met at los Cojines though they reject the title — focused on rebuilding their lost language and generating a cultural base that could be generationally reproduced through ritual practice. However, so many records were consciously eliminated that claiming continuity may be tenuous. Reconstructed Chibcha (if accepted as an accurate representation) also has a political valence as the Colombian government requires an official language for an Indigenous group to obtain recognition.
The Muisca — neo or not — do seem to represent a kind of “postmodern Indigeneity.” Where a “modern Indigeneity” is premised on a concrete, genealogical connection to a pre-Columbian Indigenous group — authenticated by mainstream historiography and often recognized by the state in a way that offers the group a measure of political legitimacy — postmodern Indigeneity seeks other forms of validation. This is accomplished by creating a self-referential identity that does not rely on a universal taxonomy of Indigeneity (from which flows political power) but instead on taking elements of a scattered and eroded heritage to consciously reclaim them. The Muisca cultural corpus becomes what those who claim to be Muisca ritually practice or produce, which results in a “game of identity” that later generations can choose to continue playing. Even if postmodern Indigeneity contains within it a desire to “become modern” — and thus recognized universally — until it achieves that objective, it is cultivated according to a different set of rules. Street art built from generic Indigenous symbols — the sort of iconography one might expect in a 1990s Disney film set in a pseudo-Mesoamerica carelessly imagined by Hollywood — is the ideal example: the intimation of Indigeneity is hijacked and endowed with new content that only exists by extending spray paint-conquered walls with images that continue to speak in the Muisca’s neo-mythological vernacular.
This complicated plight — of cultural erasure and subsequent struggle for social anchoring — reflects Boyacá’s general sociocultural “layeredness.” Either in the form of brittle, weathered bone (los Cojines) or flora springing forth from powdery fertilizer (efforts to capture an “authentic” Muiscaness), previous modes of social organization leave their skeletons nakedly visible.
In Legends of Guatemala, author Miguel Asturias1 writes of this phenomenon:
“It is a city made of buried cities, one on top of the other like the floors of a high-rise apartment building. Floor upon floor. City upon city. Book of old pictures, bound in stone with pages of gold from the Indies, of Spanish manuscripts and colonial paper! Chest holding the frozen forms of a dead chimera, the gold from the mines and the treasure of the moon’s gray hair hoarded in silver rings! In this high-rise city, the ancient cities are preserved intact. Up the stairs, dream-images come, leaving no trace, making no sound. From door to door the centuries are changing. In the light of the windows, the shadows blink. Ghosts are the words of eternity.”
Just as well as the social accretion of Asturias’ country, this excerpt describes the Boyacense paradigm with Tunja in particular serving as the plural city par excellence, circumscribed by labyrinthine cultural depths which far exceed what we witnessed during the solstice ritual. Nestled in this maze we watch and wonder at children’s folkloric language, spoken in abandoned neighborhoods at the city’s periphery, used to spin a landscape of crocodiles and witches who frighten off the youngest and arrest their wayward wandering around ditches or wells, the phantasmal presence of La Llorona restricted to a single street, who joins a web of ghosts chained in place by memory become myth, the periodico del pueblo composed of curated newspaper clippings and Tunjano micropolemics pinned to a board in el Pasaje de Vargas by a lone, battlesome editor in the early morning.
La Iglesia
Matthew Rodrigez, Úmbita, Boyacá, CII-17
Asturias, Legends of Guatemala, 46, 2011 trans. Kelly Washbourne
a serve!