Reflections from the SHOW: Medellín Mi Hogar 2012
"In a state-of-the-art theater in Medellín, we bring story,
storyteller and audience together in one room. In this theater
desplazadas-neighborhood founders (who tell their own stories in the videos)
are the protagonists, critics, audience, and respondents. In a temporary
inversion of power, the community members have more prestige and voice than the
politicians, social workers, media and university people also in the room. The
community members and their stories are (literally) the largest visual, audio, and
physical presence—on the massive film screen, filling the majority of the 400
theater seats, on stage and booming through the speakers..."
-Tamera Marko "Transnational Mobility in Conflict Zones: How Alternative Feminist Stories Cross the Colombian-U.S. Border
Cesar
On the day
of our presentation, I had two very substantial fears: that no one I had
invited would come and that I would embarrass myself in front of dozens of
people while delivering my speech. Luckily, neither fear came true. Both my
biological family and my host family came to the presentation. In addition, one
of the families I had interviewed also came to show their support. And although
I was nervous when I gave the speech, I got through it without too much
embarrassment. I was most impacted by knowing that all the families that
attended had taken time out of their day to watch our films. To them, a day
away from a paying job is a sacrifice that they can’t afford to make. Their
support of us “gringos” impacted me greatly. I remember thanking one of the
families for coming; they responded by thanking me for allowing them to tell
their story and for wanting to help change Colombia for the better. We were all
so grateful, yet I felt as if I could never repay them for all that they taught
me. Although some of the documentaries were sad, the environment we were in
fostered healthy discussions about the future instead of morbid pity about the
past. On that day I learned about hard work, family values, cultural pride, and
the need to change perceptions. Seeing the reactions of the families while we
viewed filled my heart with pride and my eyes with tears. Now that I’m about to
return home, I hope that our work can convince other students to come to
Medellin and learn lessons of their own.
Carrie
On Friday, we had our final theater presentation. I was
nervous that the families I interviewed would not show up to the event.
Especially because at 9:05 (5 minutes after the event was supposed to begin),
none of my families were there. Since the families I visited were in the
corregimientos, my families were at least an hour from the city's center (where
we held the presentation). The city provided transportation for the families,
but I feared that Berta, Gloria, and Antonio would not be able to attend (due
to work, prior obligations, the distance in general, etc.). I also feared that
Luz, who I had never officially met (because Katie filmed/interviewed and I
edited for the video), would freak out when I introduced myself.. I feel like I
know her well from the video I've watched a million times and she didn't even
know I existed. Luckily, soon after, I turned around to three smiling faces.
Although hesitant at first, Luz greeted me with open arms and thanked me for
helping with her video. Gloria and Antonio called their video
"espectacular"! Berta was unable to attend because her son had a
ceremony for joining the military, and I hope that she enjoys the video when
she receives her copy.
Throughout the entire process of creating and editing
videos, our group has been contemplating the true value of our service. Tam and
Jota always told us that "we are documenting stories that would otherwise
die with their tellers and capturing memories that people may not know
exist." Friday was the first time that I honestly believed that.
Gloria and Antonio, flower growers that create
"silletas" in Santa Elena, said that the video gave the campesinos
(peasants in the countryside) a voice - one that is rarely heard by Medellin
but needs to be. This made me proud of our work, and I hope that future Duke Engage
Colombia-ers have as an incredible of a time as I have had the past 8 weeks. I
am sad to leave, but happy at the same time – because I know I will be back.
Dani
My biggest fear about the show was that it would feel like
the end. Or that it would be the end. The end of something. We always knew that
August 10th was inevitable, but in June it seemed too far off on the
horizon and in July it was always a few weeks away. It didn’t seem real until
August-a tangible grasp on the deadline so to speak of sharing our work beyond
the confines of our Macbooks.
This fear wouldn’t allow for me to feel happy or sad,
because it was never an ‘either or.’ I felt moments of both extremes- happiness
over the celebration of our work and sadness regarding many of the stories and
matching faces to those gut wrenching personal narratives. So maybe my fear
wasn’t the feeling of closure, but rather facing the reality of our experiences
here in Colombia over the last two months. Since calling Carlos E home, our lives
have been nearly indescribable and a word or two fails to encompass it all, just
barely skimming over the surface of a complex web of emotions.
During the course of the show, I was humbled by the
overwhelming gratitude each of us expressed for our cogestores, the families we
interviewed, and our homestay support networks. This event was for them. And as
I watched the videos playing on the big screen, I was so proud of these
families for their bravery, their courage to talk about painful experiences, and
their eagerness to share both their hurt and joy with us. Making the
documentaries and giving their courage a voice united us, accurately conveying
the collaboration between Duke Engage and Medellín Solidaria. And even though the families that I had interviewed were not present, I could still feel Doña Maria Elena's presence, Don Orlando's stoic courage, and Doña Zoraida's vivacious spirit.
One of my favorite moments, however, was listening to Gloria
and Antonio comment on their video and how proud they were to participate in
the Feria de Flores and to be campesinos. Although it seems difficult to
imagine, their pride and joy was even more pronounced at the post- video
showing, Gloria’s face glowing with even more happiness.
But perhaps what I learned from the families that attended
this event was what this celebration truly meant for them-for us it was somewhat
of an end, but for them, it was only the beginning. The beginning of a long
process of coming to grips with the past, confronting the memories, allowing
themselves to grieve, to cry, to laugh, to smile, to feel. I remember seeing Elena,
a woman from Katie’s video, sobbing during Julie’s video that played at the
beginning of the show. And I could not even begin to understand how emotional
it must have been for her to listen to another’s story and know that you’re not
alone. And after all the hours interviewing in the field, editing the footage,
and piecing together our documentaries frame by frame, I now have a deeper
understanding of the impact of our work here this summer. This summer, we
listened. We emoted. We showed compassion, understanding, friendship, and love.
We crossed borders. We built bridges of understanding between two languages and
two cultures. And we brought two worlds together.
Julie
DavidJulie
Rubiela was the first guest to show up to the event. I
didn’t realize how happy I would be to see her. We met on my first day in the
field and I almost thought she wouldn’t even remember me, but while the other
guests trickled into the auditorium, we laughed about how at our first meeting
we needed Johanna to translate every word. The next thing I knew, Rubiela was
giving me outdated pesos for me to keep as a memory and as a collector’s item.
It really touched me that she remembered so vividly our short time together and
wanted to give me something in return. At times, I’ve felt like our visits to
these homes are just fleeting moments in these peoples’ lives, but this
restored my faith in the impact that I’ve had here. The fact that Rubiela
wanted to give me something in return must have meant that I gave her something
in our short time together.
After the event, I didn’t feel as much closure as I
expected. My fear beforehand was that I wouldn’t be content with the videos I
made and that I’d want to improve them. It was unsettling to show the videos to
the families while I was noticing mistakes and things I wish I would have fixed
previously. And so I didn’t feel like I was completely finished, which makes it
even harder to come to terms with the fact that we’re leaving in less than 2
days. I don’t have a brand new house that I built with my own hands that I can
look at and think, “it’s because of me that this family now has a roof over
their head.” Closure is a funny thing.
I truly feel, though, that we have given a lot to the
community in our time here, but because of the abstractness of the project,
it’s a very hard thing to be certain of. But I’ve come to realize something
very special about this project—something that makes it very unique from other
service projects, and one that makes it powerful in its own way. We did not fly
into Medellín with a collective expertise that we planned on imparting to our
community partners. We did not get here and teach a local enterprise how to
improve their business. We did not drive into a neighborhood, dig a trench for
a piping system, and offer water to a community. We didn’t decide that a group
of people was missing something and try to give it to them. What we did was
open our ears, open our hearts, and open our minds. We asked the community to
tell us what we needed to know, what they wanted to tell us. Winston Churchill
once said, “courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also
what it takes to sit down and listen.”
It took a lot of courage to sit and watch my videos because
I had to sit down and listen to the potential criticism of my work. And it took
a lot of courage this whole time throughout this whole process—to listen
impartially to these difficult stories, to edit them with care, and to respect
the words and wishes of our interviewees. And while we may not leave with mud
on our hands and scrapes on our knees as evidence of our work here, those
things will wash away in the shower and heal in a few weeks. Open minds and
fuller hearts will stay forever.
While planning for the event, I wasn’t able to pinpoint any fears because I didn’t know what to expect. The great unknown stretched before and I couldn’t picture myself in that new setting because everything was so new. The experience was identical to before I came to Colombia. I began to as we prepared for the event. It was reported that the social workers wouldn’t be attending the event because they had work and my heart sank. Carmen, the social worker I followed through the neighborhoods, wouldn’t be able to make it and I’d be deprived of seeing her response to the documentary I made focusing on her.
Eventually she did walk in and my disappointment was replaced by the fear that I didn’t do her story justice and that she wouldn’t like it. Furthermore, if her superiors, who were present at the show, disapproved she might lose her job. After mentally reviewing the documentary I realized that I was being irrational. Carmen’s interviews were perfect, she only said amazing things about MS and the story she told of Doña Amparo displayed how much she cared about her work. Once I realized these things I was able to reassure Carmen that she had no reason to worry.
From that point forward, I was bouncing off the walls happy. I was excited about making my speech, I was elated that Carmen and my host brother made time to watch the show and my partners’ faces when they saw the families they interviewed added to all this. I simply couldn’t keep myself from beaming the whole time.
Looking back on my experience, I find that words escape me when I try to express how thankful I am that these people had the courage to share with us such difficult and beautiful stories. How thankful I am for Carmen letting me into her life so wholeheartedly. I wish that I had more time to spend getting to know the families better and hang out with Carmen and her family. For now I’ll have to settle with remembering their stories as I admire the family portraits I took for them and wait for my next trip to see those who I’m leaving.
Until then, chao Medellin.
Albert
I did not sleep
well the entire week before the theater event. I tend to become very anxious about things well in
advance. This event was a
culmination of all our hard work, so I rationalized that these worries should
be expected. I pictured the
families that I interviewed with a look of confusion as they told me they
absolutely hated my videos. This
did not come true, as both of the families loved them.
The dialogue
that occurred after each viewing impacted me most. I attempted to tell my
families and an audience why I chose to pursue their stories and what I found
special about them. The families
reacted warmly with a great amount of gratitude and emotion. They told me why they decided to
confide in me and allow me in their home.
They noted my personality, my dancing abilities, and my curiosity.
This brings me
to my biggest fear of not only the theatre show, but also of the entire trip:
expressing my emotions in Spanish.
I remember clearly that after showing my first video, a video about
Maria Juanita Bernal who’s father had given her away after discovering she had Polio,
I tried to tell her why I chose her story. I tried to explain that I felt a connection with the two
families I selected, the story of Maria Juanita and Gladys Elena Muñoz. It was the warm welcome that struck me
upon entering their homes, their powerful stories that show the strength of
women, and the happiness I felt well after I leaving. Well…that’s what I meant to say. I am not sure if this fear came true because I felt like I
butchered every word I could muster together in a sentence, but many of the
host moms later commented on how well I spoke. I guess I’ll never know.
Since the show,
I’ve thought about the impact of this theater event. I saw that my work touched the emotional chords of the two
families I made documentaries of. I saw how families from the countryside of
Santa Elena spoke to families in the various communities in the city. They
communicated through this forum that we created with the theater show. Gladys Elena Muñoz’s daughter said that
my video showed the strength of single mothers. She told the audience that she worries about her son growing
up and asking where his father is, but my video somehow lessened her
worries. Maria Juanita’s daughter
described their hesitance about their mother being on camera, but after
watching, they appraised me for portraying their mother as they see her. They
both thanked me for visiting, but I still am not sure how these videos achieved
such a powerful impact. How did
these short documentaries help their lives, relieve their worries and elicit
such emotional responses. I believe
that I can describe how this process has left an impression on me, but what I
left behind still eludes me.
Katie
Last Friday was the culmination of our two-months of work in
Colombia. Some of the families we interviewed
were invited, in addition to our host families and cogestoras. The presentation was from 9-12 on a
workday so going in, I was very afraid the families I had interviewed would not
come. Therefore, when I saw Luz
and Elena arrive I leapt from my chair and attacked them with an enthusiasm
that in retrospect could have scared them away but they did not run in fear and
we sat together to watch the presentation. The first film shown told the story of a family that had
been displaced in a similar manner to the way in which Elena and Luz had been
displaced. The woman from the
video described how she had founded a group for displaced families in her
neighborhood and I kept thinking how valuable this would be in Santo Domingo,
the neighborhood where I worked and Luz and Elena lived. After the video ended, we broke into
individual groups by neighborhood and I showed the videos of Luz and Elena,
where they both told their stories of displacement and survival. During Luz’s
video, Elena cried and during Elena’s video they both cried. It struck me then that a great purpose
of the presentation was providing a forum in which people from Medellín can meet
other families with backgrounds similar to theirs. After my videos ended, Elena spoke with Luz and I am proud
to have been a part of something that brought these women together. They only live a few blocks from each
other and have experienced displacement at the hands of Guerillas and paramilitaries,
the murder of their husbands, and the establishment of a new life in Medellín. I am honored to have introduced them
because I think, I hope, that if they work together they can accomplish more
than I as a foreigner could hope to accomplish. These are strong, independent women and if they combine
their resources, knowledge and history, they can create something like the
group for displaced people that we saw in the first video. I think the greatest value in this
presentation is showing the stories of individuals to people from all over
Medellín. Hopefully, this will
trigger a greater social change that will continue helping people in Medellín after
DukeEngage has left.
Alexa
The truth is that I do not want to get my hopes up. When I
called Sobeida for the first time to arrange to see her again, her voice lit up
the phone, my nerves disappeared and the excitement I sensed invigorated me.
When I saw her the next morning, her small hands pulled me forward into a warm
hug and I felt more prepared to ask the difficult questions written on the
inside of my hand. After the walk to her house, I met her daughter again. She
ran around the house and came back, face beaming with pride as she held out a
beautiful pair of blue and white beaded earrings that she had made. The first
words she said to me were that they were a gift. The last were that she would
work on another pair with me in mind for the show on Friday.
The following three nights I went without sleep so that I
could finish the film in time for it to be included on the DVD that would be
distributed throughout the city. I had never pushed myself for that long and
through the discouragement I sometimes felt within myself and among the others;
I wanted to do it for Sobeida. I wanted her story to be shared as that of an
awe-inspiring woman that forced you to sympathize with people often neglected;
vendors selling fruit to passing cars at street lights, mothers forced to leave
their sleeping children at 3 in the morning in order to
work, women supporting their family with one salary that is inherently less
than a mans…
Through the long hours of editing, I lost sight of which
holes I was filling in her story on my own as I watched the evolving film. Had
I done some injustice by cutting out a vital part of the narrative? The
transitions looked rugged, the b-roll looked shaky, the sound was uneven and I
was disappointed. The film made it. The next day, Albert and Julie asked if
they could see it. Through phone calls and idle conversation in the room, their
attention didn’t stray throughout the whole 13 minutes and as the credits began
to roll, I saw on their faces a similar reaction that I had had after hearing
her history. The relief that the intensity of her story had lasted through my
editing of the narrative made me anxious to share it with her at the show. The
documentary was something I was proud of and I started thinking of ways that I
could share it to inspire others to think differently of displaced women,
Colombia, and “the poor” who often were grouped together under a unanimous face
of poverty.
Several days before the show, someone was shot in Sobeida’s
neighborhood. The afternoon before the show as we were preparing in Tam’s
apartment, Jota got a call that Sobeida wanted the video to be pulled from the
project. After having worked on the film so intensely, the hardest part was
understanding that I had no part in her story. Hers had inspired my own
experience in Medellín so much that I was disappointed I would not be able to
share it as something that had moved me to think differently. As hard as it was
to hear, it was not something I ever questioned. This is her story and her
reason for pulling it reminded me again of my small understanding of the
caution she has been forced to live with over the last fifteen years.
She agreed to come to the event so that I could give her a
private screening of the film and talk to her about what she was comfortable
sharing. I stayed up again in preparation for the show, editing out the parts
that could put her at risk. We arrived an hour early, I scuttled in holding up
my dress and finishing the breakfast wrapped up in a paper towel my mom had
left me with. As the other students talked about the possible reactions of
their families, I went to the bathroom brushed my teeth to pass the time.
Sobeida ultimately decided not to come.
