A man enters the metro train limping, but all the seats are full. The person sitting next to me jumps up to give the limping man a seat. A woman carrying a baby in her arms enters, and another man graciously gives up his spot. This would never happen in U.S. metros, let alone the buses at Duke. People in Medellín look out for one another, they call each other “corazón” or “muñeca”, and they’re proud of who they are and the city they live in. I would love to be part of the Medellín family. My looks don’t scream “foreigner!”, my host family treats me as one of their own, the families I visit in the barrios smile when I use paisa words like “bacano”, and I even know my way around the metro stations. But I’m still an extranjera as soon as I open my mouth. I wish I could easily fall into conversation with families like my cogestores do, and I wish I could understand the jokes our compañeros make in Spanish. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of my time staring at people as they try to slow down and explain what they’re saying as if talking to a baby. I never realized how much of a barrier language can be to being myself and showing my real personality. Everyone receives us with open arms in this city, but I wish I had more than 4 remaining weeks to become the best paisa I could be…and to sneak my way into becoming a part of the caring, beautiful, and proud Medellín family.
Stephanie: Family Matters
After a long morning of tears and laughs, I come home and think about family. The families that I have visited these past three weeks have struggled and their resilience has proved to be one of their greatest assets. Some families have been torn apart from displacement, daughters and sons have become drug addicts, mothers have had to resort to prostitution to put food on her families’ table, families have lost their siblings and parents to gang and guerilla violence, children have committed suicide, and families have had to flee neighborhoods for years to avoid certain gang members who seek to kill the family.
Is this what you want to hear? That violence has taken over the family dynamic and that all of the images we believe to be true about Colombia are in fact true? Well, there is more than meets the eye—the family dynamic and sense of community is amazing! Families in Colombia (and I believe in most Latin American cultures) stay as a knit group—family is everything. I have always been taught this as a child; friends, boyfriends, classmates…they all come and go, but family is ALWAYS there for you. This is not something that is extremely prevalent in the US, at least in my opinion.
I remember having a conversation with Natalie’s cousin yesterday. He asked me if I was going to marry an American and that led to a conversation about the difference between my Cuban heritage and the American culture. I spoke bluntly to him. I told him that when I went to Duke for the first time I was shocked. The people seemed a little distant and did not have the same bond I had with my family. Whereas I called my grandmother, my grandfather, my father, and my mom everyday, others would speak to their parents once a week if that. If strangers came into the picture at Duke, the majority of the population was not welcoming; I guess that was how I felt at first when I went to Duke—like a foreigner despite being born in the United States. All my life I had lived around latinos and had been a part of that culture and now I had to adapt. I can remember a time when I wanted to say I had a complejo with something and said complexion and people around me looked at me like I was crazy and laughed at me. Although I laughed with them, deep down every joke that was made towards me in relation to my culture and language barrier hurt. With time, I learned more and more and grew to become accustomed to it and would just laugh. I am glad that I found my group of friends who accept me for me and loved that I was different; they were my new family at Duke, providing me with support and love. When I got to Colombia, however, I never felt like an outsider. As soon as I arrived I was received welcomingly: Mi casa es tu casa.
And my family at home, they are wonderful to say the least. My grandmother always begs me to stay at home when I come visit from Duke, my mom freaks out if I forget to call her for a day, my brother bothers me over the phone, and my dad frequently has health problems, which scares me to death. All families have their problems; my family is definitely not perfect, but we love each other. And that is what I see in the families that I visit on a daily basis. They may not have enough food for the day, they may be starving, they may have been displaced, they may have no water to shower with, but they love each other and they are FAMILY. We may not choose our family, but they are God’s gift to us as we are to them. ¡La familia es una bendición!
Gideon:
Since the start of the program, we have become sort of a family. As the youngest members of the family, the Duke students are the children and siblings to each other. We hang out together, play together and of course sometimes fight with each other. Tam and Jota are obviously our cool young parents, who luckily give us a lot of freedom. They’re pretty easy going but know how to lay down the law when necessary. Greg and Nina are our young aunt and uncle (unclear as to which one we are actually blood related to). We see them from time to time, have a beer or two, and they seem to understand our generation just a little bit better. Camilo is the crazy uncle you have heard so much about but never actually met. He seems to have everything going for him, but you’re not entirely sure how he makes money or what his age is. Suzanne was our extremely supportive aunt who was not afraid to follow the unconventional path. Alex is definitely our older brother. He is protective of us but at the same time goes out with us. He shows us the ropes in Medellin, but is not hesitant to kick back and enjoy himself while we are doing the same. Finally, as the only guy in the group, I am the twin brother. I therefore also sometimes feel protective over the group. Not that any of the girls are irresponsible, but as the only guy I sometimes feel responsible to make sure nothing bad happens. And of course Gaby is the abuelita. Not that she is boring in anyway. But within the group she is the most responsible and motherly. This week we unfortunately lost one of our DukeEngage family members, Jessica, who had to leave Medellin early for family reasons. Although it’s only been a week, we all have begun to miss her already. While she is hundreds of miles away, we are going to keep her as involved with the project as possible, and we will use the footage that she worked so hard to collect.
Kendall:
A family is a group of people who make sacrifices out of love for one another and want the other members of the family to be happy above all else. They are the people that accept you for who you are and let you be crazy and weird and still like you at the end of the day. Here in Colombia I have experienced many different forms of family.
I have spent my days interviewing families of the most literal kind. They are blood relatives who live together and are united in their fight for everything in their lives. The families I have interviewed, who I affectionately refer to as “my families”, have overcome everything from civil war, to landslides, to sickness and loss, to displacement and poverty. But through it all, they have supported each other, found ways to make ends meet, and even fled their homes, leaving everything behind, to protect each other from violence. They are inspiringly resilient, creative, and welcoming beyond expectation. They have almost nothing in terms of material possessions, and yet they are some of the happiest people I know because everything they do have has been hard earned. I have grown quite attached to these people, even after only a few hours in their company, and I have found myself boasting about them and showing them off to the other Dukies at every chance I get. (I made Steph, LR, and Gabby come to a fashion show put on by one of my girls, and I made Gideon see a poster hanging in the Cultural Center because it had a picture of one of my boys’ playing a musical instrument on it.) I am so proud of the accomplishments of my families in Moravia and I admire how after their tough pasts they are soaring to new heights.
Then there is my small work family that guided me through my exploration of Moravia- Yamile, Merlyn, and Catalina- the three cogestoras who have taken Gideon and I under their wing. We would meet up after work each day at a small ice cream parlor in El Bosque, a sector of Moravia, and go out lunch together to talk and laugh over language barrier miscommunications. We have exchanged phone numbers, emails, found each other on facebook, and we have turned a work routine into a cultural exchange and then into friendships. The girls specifically picked out families to take us to visit, rescheduled their morning appointments to the afternoon to make time for our interviews, and helped us with our Spanish immensely. They are kind-hearted, and fun-loving, and I am so glad I had the opportunity to get to know them.
Next I have my families outside of work. The first is obviously my Duke family- eight strangers thrown together and forced to bond over their foreignness; and second is my Nacional family whose members have done everything in their power to keep us entertained and enchanted with their city (including going out with us and hosting parties even when they’re busy and tired, taking us to movies they have little to no interest in seeing, and inviting us to get to know their friends at fincas or meet their families in their parents’ apartments for a meal).
Finally I have my traditional families: one that I am only in contact with sporadically and through a computer, and the other that greets me every day. With my host family, I used to feel like just another responsibility- another mouth to feed, another load of laundry, another kid to take care of with the flu. But this week was a turning point. In the span of the last three days I have been invited to my sister Marta’s wedding and wedding shower, taken to a relative’s house to celebrate my brother Camilo’s birthday, been asked for help with English homework by my little brother Santi, and encouraged to attend a rock concert on Saturday in which a cousin is performing. Sitting at the wedding shower, silently starring at the lively people telling stories and laughing together, my head spinning with Spanish and fatigue, it hit me- I was no longer the gringa passing in and out, occasionally preset during meals. Without notice, something had changed. I had become part of the family, one of them, not simply one among them. The shift was strange and wonderful at the same time. But then again, families are like that- crazy, weird, but when together, wonderful.
Gabby: My Family: La Divisa
Walking through my neighborhood, La Divisa, for the last time I tried to soak in every moment I could. On our way up to the first house of the day, I realized I recognized houses, streets, stores; I could actually find my way around. I switched cogestoras this week, I got to spend time with Diana. We got lost once or twice, but I was pleasantly surprised at my ability to remember previous homes I had visited and I even stopped by one to ask for directions. A family with three little boys remembered me as we walked by and they ran out to ask if I could take more pictures. It amazed me that my short visit made such an impact on them. While I don’t know everyone in the neighborhood, it was still a great feeling to be able to walk around and wave hello to people I recognized. This neighborhood has had its tense moments, but I’ve gotten to experience the wonderful people who live here and who have welcomed me into their homes like family. Diana had promised her parents that she would bring back some of Doña Carmelita’s arepas, so our last stop for the day was her house. I will never forget my many visits with Doña Carmelita. She showed me how important family is, whether you're related by blood or not. Every time my bus passed by her house or if I were walking back to the MetroCable after a day in the field, she would look up from her kitchen and wave. Most importantly, she taught me how to make arepas, an experience I will never forget. Of course, Doña Carmelita greeted Diana and I with a warm hug and asked if we were hungry. My visit to this barrio started with an arepa and ended with one too.
Lydia Rose: Family Photos
If you’re travelling and looking for a good, inexpensive souvenir, a postcard is generally a safe bet. There’s no way my amateur photography and cheapest-I-could-find camera would be capable of duplicating the scenes captured by those glossy 5x7s of famous landmarks or vast cityscapes at sunset. And yet, photos of the metrocable soaring up a mountain or the bright colored blooms of the Feria de las Flores can only go so far towards capturing my time here in Medellín.
For the rest, I have a different kind of photo; these are the snapshots I’ve taken of family after family in the course of my fieldwork in the barrios surrounding the Parque Biblioteca España. In my three weeks there, I snapped portraits of some 23 families. My camera boasts images of eagerly smiling children, wide, curious eyes reaching for my camera, babies sleeping on their mother’s shoulders, couples smiling arm in arm, grandmothers patting their hair bashfully pre-interview, siblings wrestling or playing with the family dog. I’ve photographed 4 Luz’s, 7 Marias, 9 Andres’s and 10 Juan’s, ranging in age from eight months to eighty years. I have snapshots of at least a dozen pets, from Kandi, the miniature guard dog with toenails painted bright ruby red, to a flock of parakeets kept in a cage nearly as large as me, from four tiny, two-week-old kittens, to a turtle that would have taken two weeks to move a single flipper.
And they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m not much for math, but I think that totals to quite the archive of memories. So, while on the one hand it seems strange to meet these families, hear their stories, gaze at their adorable baby photos and the framed portraits of smiling girls on their quinceañeras, and then leave, I’m not walking away empty handed. What’s more, neither are they. When we give the families copies of the photos and footage we took, we’ll be handing them a tangible reminder of the time we shared together, and that is better than a postcard any day.
Natalie: La Pajarito Familia
Every night before I go to bed, I get all of my camera equipment and consent forms together, placing them in my small, over-the-shoulder bag. My Medellin Solidaria vest hangs above my bed, ready to be slipped on immediately after breakfast. I always try to put my water bottle in a place where I won’t forget it; leaving it behind once proved to create an extremely dehydrated day in the field. I usually sleep pretty peacefully these days (unlike the night before my first day, when I tossed and turned all night), all with the help of a daily afternoon nap.
All of this preparation is for the families I work with. Meeting up with our cogestores at a certain time and place, taking the long, sleep-inducing Metrocable ride up to Pajarito…all of it is for talking and listening to these families. Thus far, I’ve interviewed two to three families a day for the past eleven days. It’s been a short period of time, and sometimes the visits become monotonous. The process works like clockwork: explain the DukeEngage program (since we’ve been saying it over and over again throughout our time here, our Spanish is almost flawless), get them to sign the consent form, and then finally pull out your camera.
You never once take an interview for granted, though. Mentally, you almost want to coast through an interview. Read the same questions every time, react to everything in a similar manner, and take photos. General, dull, and forgettable, for both you and the family.
For a couple days, I was struggling with how I would be able to get some kind of story out of these families. The interviews had been a tad bit more uncomfortable lately because (mainly) the women I was interviewing were getting really nervous when I would let them know I would be video recording them and taking pictures. Usually the cogestores would tell the mothers that I would just ask a few questions, always forgetting to mention a camera. So the minute I would show them the scary, black Kodak brick with the glaring red light, they would say, “Oh no, film my children instead,” or “Oh, I look horrible. Can I change? Please?” At first, it was something to laugh about amongst ourselves, but then I knew after having an interview fall apart due to the interviewee’s nerves, my approach needed to change.
Instead of turning into a robot while I was recording, I needed to listen. I remembered Clara (one of two women who make Spanish transcripts of our raw footage) said at one of our Friday workshops that “you must be a lover, not a hunter, when giving an interview.” Tam also mentioned a piece of advice before our first day that I took to heart as well: “Your job is to listen.” So instead of scrambling for my Flipcam when somebody starts saying something interesting after the interview is over, or freaking out when one of my cameras dies, I listen. I wasn’t in these families’ homes to hunt down and search for a story. These were incredibly personal stories that were fortunately being shared selflessly within five minutes of meeting me.
Sometimes the fact that these connections are so short-lived bothers me a bit. I also sometimes feel this way about discovering the city; some companeros will tell me that I need to see other parts of Medellin, not always rumbeando at the same places, like Parque Lleras or Parque Poblado. These kind of processes, of getting to understand something or someone, take a lot more time than eleven days in the field, or two months of a summer. But it’s what we have and what we were graciously offered by our university. So we have to work with it. We have to listen and take in as much as we can. So tomorrow, on my last day in the field, I don’t want to be there to crave a story; I want to be there to indulge in an interaction with human beings I may never see again.
