Greetings from Bogota

Hope you all had a great weekend

The border crossing from Ecuador to Colombia was pretty easy. A 5-hours bus ride from Quito to Tulcan (the border town), 10 mins taxi ride to Rumichaca border, stamp out from Ecuador immigration, cross the bridge to Colombia DAS immigration to stamp in, take a 10 mins taxi ride to Ipiales bus terminal, there take a bus to Cali (10 hours), Bogota or anywhere in the country.

In Cali, I met up with folks from Couchsurfing, we went to a ballet show (which was interesting by the way) and later hung out in a canteen eating Empanadas and chatting. It was a great to be in Cali again, I met some of the amazing people there 2 years ago. Left Cali after 3 days for Bogota, it was a 12 hours bus ride and as usual it was cold in Bogota.
In Bogota, I stayed in a dorm room at Casa Bellavista Hostal, it’s a pretty nice and cool hostal. Very clean, free breakfast and cool staff. At this hostel, I met two graduate students from University of Minnesota who are doing research in Bogota on the same thing as I am, pretty cool right?

Last Saturday, my boss invited me to her house for her birthday get-together. That was my first time seeing so many black Colombians, guess what, I was looking for similarities between them and Nigerians. We dance the same, and I swear some of them looked like a Yoruba person while other looked Ibo or Ewe. Also at the get-together, I met a couple who also worked/research Afro-Colombians; the lady is a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz while the guy is an Anthropologist professor at university of Indiana. Yes to Networking.

This is my second week at the internship, last week I did lots of translation from English to Spanish and vice-versa, was introduced to lots of black activists and to the ways things worked in the organization. Last Friday, I attended my first staff meeting, it was really impressive to see the passion of the staff despite the ongoing threats they face. Just a brief history, black activists and organizations working with the black Colombians have been receiving death threat for some time now; some of these threats have been acted on. Just recently, a black female activist was assassinated in Medellin, so now you might understand the pressure my coworkers are under. One of the main points of discussion in the staff meeting was how to protect themselves and their family.

I was invited to a fare-well party by two of my co-workers on Friday, I was fun, there I was introduced to Afro- Colombians university students. They told me they had a national organization that does community service work with the community. On Saturday, went to a birthday get-together of one of my co-workers.

So far I have been treated like a queen by the Afro-Colombian community here in Bogota. They said it felt good to meet folks from the “Mother land” since that’s their root and I told them it felt god to meet my brothers & sisters from another mother. In addition, this community is so generous and kind. After a week here, I know I made the right decision to come to Colombia and intern with an Afro-Colombian NGO.

Sad day at work today, the president of the NGO I’m interning received a death threat, she and others folks working with Afro-Colombian NGOs and UN agencies were given 20 days to leave the city or die.

In another two weeks, I’ll be giving y’all another update…..Until then ciao!