Reflections from the theater show | Reflexiones de la presentación

Bailey

The show was a process of getting stories out of my own head and into someone else’s. After watching (and re-watching), mapping, translating, researching, editing, subtitling, music-ing, and tweaking three families’ stories for 4 weeks, they were completely ingrained in my brain and I had no way to tell if they still made sense. At the Public Library last Monday the stories of Nubia, Claudia, and Mery left my brain and appeared on the big screen. There they were, telling their stories. And people understood. They followed the plot, identified with the characters. “I loved your videos!” everyone said. “I want to visit La Cruz now!” “What an amazing story!” 

But the more important arena was to come one week later when I brought the videos to the families. The most important moment was when they watched my work for the first time. I sat there hoping they recognized themselves, heard their familiar story instead of my own re-styling or re-imagining of their history. Tears came to eyes. Hugs and besitos were given. And at last I felt that I had achieved what needed to be achieved: the story had gotten out of my head, through an audience, and was received once again by the person who told it.

Browne

I don't get stage fright. I don't get nervous reading in front of large crowds, or, for that matter, presenting my own work. 

So then why is it that during our documentary screening, seconds before my video was to be played, I started sweating uncontrollably? Why is it that my heart skipped one, or four, beats, as I awaited the premier of my documentary? This wasn't stage fright, per say; my back was to the crowd as I sat on the edge of my seat in the front row. This was a different kind of stage fright, a feeling that was causing my heart to nearly explode. It was a fear of the reception of my video. 

Rosmira had opened her home, heart, and past to me. She had told me of her moments of complete and utter terror, despair, and loneliness, and of moments of hope and strength. She had given me her story with open arms to take from her home at the highest point of the mountain and trusted me to share it. Had I effectively told the story she wanted to be told?

As Rosmira began to describe how she constructed her house, images of the inside of her home flashed on screen, as simultaneous gasps swept over the crowd. I had watched this segment over and over again while editing it countless times, so it had little effect on me. To the audience, however, the images simply transformed her words into reality. They were able to see the tied-together sticks that formed the shape of the roof, the dirt floor covered with carpet scraps, the dilapidated state of the house. The images spoke for themselves. 

This reaction of the crowd to the part of my video that was, to me, the most important, completely erased my previous concerns. I had no idea that these images would generate such a strong response, but they were able to show the audience the family's living conditions and difficulties that they had faced. I was then able to sit back in my seat and listen to Rosmira tell her story.

Elysia

Our show on Monday was the first time that I'd shown my video to anyone outside our group, or my host family. I was nervous, but also interested, to hear their opinions - criticisms and compliments alike. Getting to watch people while they watched my video was a really unique experience. I got to see their facial expressions, their reactions to various parts of my video. It was a little nervewracking being right there, but I think it prepared me to do the same with Orfilia, whose story is the focus of my video. Getting feedback on my work was incredibly helpful, especially in regards to presentation of Medellín Solidaria, and of the neighborhood. 

Getting to show an audience who is so aware of, and so much a part of, this city was really a fantastic experience, one that made me consider other points of view in constructing these videos. 

Jack

On Monday, I was nervous. Nervous that my video wouldn’t depict the city of Medellín like the Paisa’s wanted it to. Nervous that it would come across as “yet another sob story”. Nervous that the Duque León family’s perseverance and love, what I wanted to portray, would be drowned by the emotional power of the struggles the family has endured. We broke off to set up our videos on our laptops, and the first group that approached mine was a mother and her two daughters. They put on the headphones and pressed play. It was a weird feeling, standing idly by watching people view something I had put so much time into. With about a minute left, I saw the mom reach up and wipe a tear from her eyes. All my fears crept back. I assumed she couldn’t get past the hardships, and that the essence of the family was getting lost. When the video ended, the mom took off the headphones and looked up at me, a smile on her face and water welled up in her eyes. I made a comment about how sad everything was that they had gone through, but she corrected me. She said she was crying because the love they had for each other was so beautiful. No single sentence could have smothered my fears and doubts like that one did. I smiled and thanked her with a hug. They asked me about the process, and then left as quickly as they had came. I sat down, released a sigh of relief, and smiled to myself, finally proud of what I had done.

Kate

It was time to take a conversation with Tam, and turn it into a legible presentation. As Monday evening’s event approached, anxiety crept up on me. The order of events would include a brief break from screening videos. A brief reflection from Kate, the English-speaking, notoriously long-winded and occasionally convoluted, thinker and speaker. I would present in Spanish. I hoped to share some crisscrossing considerations about displacement, community development, and urban planning. And I hoped to be coherent. Maybe this time I could dodge speaking in abstractions, outrun seeming vague. I had personal experiences and more slippery musings to share. I wanted to be accessible to my audience—a Spanish speaking audience. I wanted to be understood. I wanted people to like what I had to say. So with a grimace on my face, and maybe in my heart, I sat down to start writing. And immediately paused. Double-click Chrome. Command+Shift+N. New window open. Type “w.” www.wordreference.com/English_Spanish_Dictionary.asp is the first link that appears—naturally. Enter. How do you translate “deliverables.”

And therein laid the problem, and my story.

[Read what I wrote here: link]

Nicholas

The show this past August 5th was a little strange for me, personally, because my documentary wasn’t complete, and the whole event sort of took me by surprise, to be honest. I had been going into the field essentially every work-day, and I hadn’t had much time to edit or trim down the video. As such, I walked into the event knowing that I wasn’t going to present my video and praying that whoever was going to watch my video during the laptop session could handle standing in one place for 20 minutes (that’s how long it was at the time). It was not edited to my standards, the music selections were placeholders, and overall I was simply not impressed with my work and wasn’t expecting anybody else to be. Regardless of my discomfort with my video, I thoroughly enjoyed the work of my peers. The ones I saw were very well done, and I imagine that the others, for which we didn’t have time to display on the big screen, were just as polished. 

So Vicki and Margarita were the two people that were lucky enough to watch my video. A compañera saw some of it, but quickly grew bored and left (HA-I was amused by this, because at this point, I think I may have done the same if I had been in her position). It’s not that the content was boring; I had essentially completed the story boarding aspect so it was cohesive in that respect. However, there was no interesting footage, no cool scenery to look at or stories like the ones being told in the videos of my peers. This video was simply explaining what Medellín Solidaria is. But, I thought to myself, why couldn’t I make it just is as interesting? I could spice it up. And now that it’s essentially done, I believe I did (thank you to that compañera). So Vicki and Margarita actually thoroughly enjoyed it – I don’t think they desperately needed the B-Footage to keep their interest, but I know that it would have helped – and commented on how hard it was going to be, for me, to cut information, because all of it seemed important! What a compliment! I had cut down from almost 5 hours of footage and almost 8 or 9 different interviews… As of now, I’ve composed 1/3 of the music that is in the documentary, and I’ve created a few animations to accompany some dialogue, to spice things up a bit. All in all, the show was a good learning experience for me, and in the end I’m glad that I had showed my work. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to improve it in the way that I did.

Nikita

I knew I was coming to Colombia to interview families and desplazadas, people who have had to uproot their lives, and start over again in these mountains of Medellín. Through this process, I knew that I would be learning about their lives. What I could not have foreseen is that I would be creating intimate relationships with the people I interview, to a point where they have come to know about my life and my stories, as well.  I chose to document Maria Herlinda Uran Uran’s story because I felt I could do it justice. The first time, I was unsure of my Spanish, of how to hold the camera without my hands shaking, of how to ask the questions that were supposed to encompass one's life. Yet, she opened her home and her heart to me time and time again. After the hours and weeks I had spent with her, I felt as if I could at least attempt to capture the essence of her story. This choice was not hard for me because she chose me, as well. She chose to sit down, long after the camera stopped recording, to ask about my day, my time in Colombia, my culture, my family, and my life back home.  She and her sons welcomed me like an old friend, and I entered her home not thinking about an interview process or what angle I should record from or what questions I should ask. Maria allowed me to come, and sit, and listen, and be with her family. In the end, Maria had multiple stories I wish I could document, but the story I wanted people to see was the story of a mother who has gone through the greatest of tragedies, but still found the strength and determination to move forward for the sake of her children. Her spirit inspired me, and that is something I hoped to capture, no matter which story is documented. I did not know how I was going to express this sentiment to a large audience due to my stage fright, let alone express it in Spanish. Yet, after the showing, various Colombians told me they laughed or they cried, or they simply enjoyed our films. It was in this moment that I realized these stories we are documenting have the power to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries, and to affect people living as close as Medellín, and as far away as my hometown. I am eternally grateful to have met and come to know her, and I hope to continue listening to Maria’s story long after I leave Colombia.

Ryan

From fourth grade until my second year of high school, I used to perform magic. I was a cardholding member of the Society of Young Magicians (the youth division of, as they tell you early on, the world's oldest magic organization), and the club met every Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at an old Methodist church that let us use their stage. After we learned a new closeup trick or performance technique, we would practice our stage routines; mine started with an empty box and tube, from which I would—magically—produce a stream of blue and yellow silk handkerchiefs. Then I'd blend them together, making, obviously, a giant green one, and later, fuse a deck of cards onto it.

I started thinking about these magical metamorphoses after the Medellín Mi Hogar theater show last Monday, where we presented our documentaries and reflected about the process of creating them. Storytelling, I realized, is inherently a process of transformation. And not just one transformation—a story undergoes constant change as it passes from one narrator to another, from one listener to the next. Monday's theater show was the result of at least three transformations: From the families we interviewed to us, from our understanding of the original footage to an edited video, and from the edited video to a public audience at the show.

These changes are inevitable; from the words we choose to speak to the video clips we choose to cut, every element of storytelling requires making a decision. But I think that, as intermediary storytellers—as the ones who collate and adapt others' stories for wider audiences—we should be especially aware of the transformations we're involved in and can control. To outsiders, it seems like we're illusionists, of some sort; we're shaping something to evoke some reaction from an audience.

Because really, the changes that stories undergo are kind of magical. How is a five minute documentary produced from three hours of footage, much less a family's life story? We could step backwards through the process, look at our notes, press command-Z until our fingers hurt, but if we were to start over again from scratch, would we end up with the same result? Would it be remotely similar?

I don't ask these questions to second-guess our videos, which I truly think are well-made and moving, but only to wonder about the process of transformation within storytelling, and because they're questions I'd like to think more about in the future as I share more stories. It's a necessary procedure; few spectators would care to sit through hours of raw interview material, but, like any kind of art, it's inescapably arbitrary and improvisatory. As I discovered on those Saturday afternoons years ago, despite months of practice, our acts were never perfect; at some point, we always ended up ad libbing, and our performances could never be exactly the same every time.

The longest official game of telephone—where a phrase is whispered from one participant to the next—involved 1,330 children, but every story we tell is the continuation of an eternal game of telephone. Stories change. Our role in their lifespan is fleeting, but our influence over them is something we should always consider.

Vaib

After the amount of effort we put into preparing out videos, Monday's show seemed like it was going to be a breeze. As an addition to my video on Doña Lolita, I gave a short speech on the impact of my time interviewing her, similar to my previous blog post. However, while these displays about work went by smoothly (sure, there were a few technical difficulties), I don't think I could prepare for the discussions that took place afterwards. 

My longest discussion was my with host aunt, Olga. As a native of Medellín, Olga was deeply concerned with her own image. When this project goes back to the United States and eventually the entire internet, what image is it portraying of Colombia. I tried to defend our work in saying that when I go back to the states, I'm definitely going to mention the amazing experiences I have had inside as well as outside of the field, but the truth is, I believed what she was saying. These stories might now be intertwined with my DukeEngage experience, but for a simple viewer of any of our videos, without my commentary, what more is Colombia than a country whose persevering inhabitants live in slums. 

These stories are in fact necessary in depicting a side of the world that many people, Colombians included, do not have a proper perception of. However, within the narrow range of material that transcends the boundary of US-Colombia social relations, will these videos of poverty and perseverance finally show Colombia in a brighter light than its drug-ridden image of the past? Or should we in turn focus another project or set of videos on the further development of Colombia's image. 

Among countless discussions with my group about this question, I've tried to rationalize our program. Our objectives are clear in that we'd like give the chance to share your own story to some of the displaced and impoverished people of Colombia who don't have the ability to do so by themselves. While we try not create a hierarchy of misfortune in opting for one story over another, many people who question this should realize that you might already have the power or mobility to share your own story. Furthermore, in addition, with sharing pathways like Facebook and personal contact, in many ways our personal stories, pictures, comments, and memories of Medellín still have more mobility than our videos, which are only present on Youtube and our website.

Images from the field | Imagenes del trabajo en campo

Bailey

This is a fish tank in Doña Claudia’s house in La Cruz, a barrio consisting mostly of desplazados and overlooks the valley of Medellín. Doña Claudia’s home is modest, bright, and comfortable. The walls of the living room are lavender, the couch magenta and green, the curtains tied with floral ribbon. Photos of her beautiful baby, Marisol, decorate the walls of Claudia’s sewing workshop, from which she runs a business that supports her family. Doña Claudia has lovingly decorated this home just as she has lovingly built a new life for them in Medellín. She told me she likes the fish because of their colors; the way they light up the room. Her artist’s eye is evident not just from her interior decorating, but from the type of life she supports , the fish she voluntarily adopted and now maintains. I like this fish tank because it surprised me. It flaunted every stereotype of poverty that I had.

• • • 

My time working in the neighborhood of La Cruz was made possible by my cogestora, or social worker, Viviana Estrada. On the first day of work, I walked to the metro by myself (nervous), got on the correct train (anxious), switched lines (scared), and arrived at the Prado bus stop (terrified). Viviana was there in her blue vest, waving. She ushered me onto the bus, and we began our ascent to La Cruz. Several impossible hairpin turns later, we arrived. As we disembarked, people began to call out to us. 

The woman selling mango slices inquired with a smile, “Hola Viviana, como te fue?” 

“Bien, Doña Rosa.”

The man fixing a rusty moto shouted, “Ay Viviana! Buenos dias!”

“Como está, Don Cesario?”

Everyone we passed waved to her, asked after her family. She was universally recognized, accepted, and loved. She addressed everyone with respect, young and old received the title “Don” or “Doña.”

When we got to the first visit of the day, I found myself sitting back and watching Viviana work. She was never in a hurry, happy to enjoy a cup of tinto and visit for an hour if that was what the other woman desired. The hours in the field slipped away scarcely before I realized. I was left with a number of images in my brain:

Doña Claudia is demonstrating the skirts she has most recently completed. Viviana praises them profusely then asks if she can put in an order.

Viviana with her tiny white laptop, expertly navigating the Medellín Solidaria website to find each family’s information, information she has been building over the last four years. 

16-year-old Sofia confesses that her boyfriend has physically abused her. With both tenderness and resolution on her face, Viviana asks Sofia why she is continuing this relationship. 

After each visit, Viviana fills out the required paperwork while continuing to converse. The discourse continues as she takes the woman’s thumb, rolls it gently on an ink pad, and presses it against blue carbon-copy paper.

There is only one chair in Doña Mery’s ranchito, which Viviana insists I take. She sits on the dirt floor, somehow looking poised even in criss-cross applesauce, her computer on her knee.

Doña Mery cries because she has completed any of the steps Viviana asks her about. Viviana retrieves a small book from her backpack, and without any introduction, begins to read from it. “Eres capaz. Eres fuerte. Eres mujer.” She reads until the tears dwindle to sniffles.

Viviana wears a lot of hats. She is not only a social worker but a psychologist, nutritionist, counselor, coach, mother, and friend. She is all things to all people, moving through this community that is not her own with grace and humility. As I disembarked from the bus (pensive), arrived at the metro (tired), and finally opened the door to my home (exhausted), I found myself with only one thought: I can’t wait to go into the field with Viviana again.

Browne

“How much farther?” I found myself asking my cogestora.

We seemed to have been walking up the same steep staircase for hours, and had made no visible progress. My cogestora motioned to the side of the staircase for us to take our third or fourth break to rest. 

“Casi a la mitad.” Almost halfway, she said, panting, gasping for breath.

We continued on, taking another break, until our next family’s house was in sight. We arrived sweating, panting, and fanning ourselves with consent forms. A woman stood in the doorway of her house laughing silently to herself, waiting to welcome us into her home.

This “hike” was especially difficult for my cogestora. Earlier in the morning, she had slipped while slowly walking down a muddy crevice in a hill to reach another family for a visit. Due to the lack of stairs, and accessibility to the home, she had twisted her ankle. 

We said our farewells to the family at the top of the never-ending staircase, and began our descent. We joked that we had just run a marathon and deserved an award for reaching the end, or at least some water. We also, however, came to the difficult realization that this was just a daily walk home for so many families living in the area. For their children to go to school, this hike was completed multiple times a day. To leave home for food, a trek is required. Groups of small children, some in diapers, some barefoot, ran around carelessly free, sprinting up the staircase, hopping between muddy hills. For them, this was daily life. For us, this was a challenging feat. Suddenly, that walk to the gym doesn’t seem so bad.

Elysia

This picture was taken just as I was leaving the home of Maria Enid, one of the women I interviewed. She runs a jardín, out of her home, where she cares for thirteen kids each and every day. She told me that some of these kids don't have food, don't have the opportunity to learn to read or write at home, and she helps (with what she can) to provide them with some of these opportunities.

Here, each of the kids had just been given a piece of pineapple, and most of them are all happily gnawing away. I think this photo shows not only a little facet of Maria Enid's work with these kids (from the fruit in their hands, to their drawings that decorate the walls), but also how carefree children can be. Most of these kids come from families with very poor backgrounds, but from this picture, you really wouldn't know - they're just kids, eating fruit and watching TV.

Jack

This is Juan Pablo Duque, the cutest little kid in all of Medellín. I was fortunate enough to visit him and his family twice: on my first trip into the field and on my last. The first time, I was more nervous than I had been the whole trip. For me it was like walking into an orgo midterm, times three. Before big tests I listen to obscene songs by Ludacris and Soulja Boy to calm my nerves. Unfortunately in this context that wasn’t an option, so I was on my own. I was nervous that they would treat me like an intruder, that I would tense up and forget all my Spanish, or that my nerves would come across as rude. As soon as I walked in Juan Pablo looked up at me, smiling as big as the sun, and all of that faded away. His smile was warm and inviting. I suddenly forgot about all the ways I could mess up, and was in the moment with the Duque León family.

I figured it would be easier the second time, but as I started walking down the wood plank stairs to their home, the feeling came back. What if my questions don’t make any sense? Are they going to be mad that they have to do this again? Did I bring my camera? Where’s Ludacris? As I took the last step off the stairs and into their home, Juan Pablo looked up at me and gave me the same huge smile. My fears receded as quickly as they did the first time.

When Juan Pablo was 6, he was diagnosed with Leukemia. Although he was responding to the treatment, Juan Pablo suffered difficult relapses. At one point during a round of chemotherapy, he entered a coma and was given three months to live. He recovered, and eventually beat the cancer altogether. Juan Pablo now lives cancer free, and dreams of playing for Nacional, his favorite soccer team.

At 20 years old, I haven’t seen anything like what Juan Pablo has seen. In the scheme of the problems he’s faced, things like being nervous about messing up Spanish grammar are immaterial. Juan Pablo has suffered more than I can even imagine, and he keeps smiling bigger than I ever could.

Nicholas

Now that I am just about to leave Medellín, crossing the bridge to the next path in my life, I feel as if there is something that I should have learned from all of this. Something huge. And yet, right at this very moment, I don’t think I could possibly take these past two months and have a truly cathartic experience. But I believe it will come, in time. I have visibly and emotionally changed in these past two months. Of all the things that have affected these changes in me during this trip, the one moment that has had the most impact on me is illustrated in the photo above. 

I’m going to digress before I talk about this photo, just to describe a bit of the journey I’ve had here in Medellín and how I’ve progressed. Bear with me. 

My life, for the past two months, has been dedicated to understanding what Medellín Solidaria is, how it works, why it does what it does, and for whom it serves. I have essentially eaten, slept, and dreamt that. To my surprise, upon viewing this picture, I felt as if all of these questions that I was asking were answered. To me, Medellín Solidaria, as its name suggests, exists for the people when everybody else cannot, or will not, be there. It represents the empathy of humanity, and it painfully reminds me of how easily I, as a member of the human race, and humanity itself, can forget that we are all brothers and sisters, that we are all human. Deep inside this machine, amidst the gears and heavy machinery of Medellín Solidaria, lie veins and arteries, and at the center, a beating heart. This is a rarity: a government organization that has a heart? That cares about its people on a personal level, to the point at which people are employed with government funds to personally assist the destitute and option-less citizens of the city? I’d never heard of one until I met the men and women of Medellín Solidaria. 

So finally to this picture. The image depicts two cogestoras (social workers for Medellín Solidaria that go from house to house and personally guide the families, to which they are assigned, out of extreme poverty). It’s such an interesting photo because the woman on the right was the cogestora of the women on the left, Maria Antionetta, at one point. 

This is to say that Maria Antionetta was once a beneficiary of Medellín Solidaria, but now she works for the program.

Now, the beauty of this photo is that these two women come from completely different backgrounds – Maria Antionetta was a desplazada, which means she was forced to move from her home due to excessive violence in her neighborhood, and the other, well, was not – and yet, here they stand, together, both working as cogestoras, on a (seemingly) more or less equal playing field. Not all of the beneficiaries of Medellín Solidaria get to work for the program – this isn’t an organization that gives money or free hand-outs. The fact that Maria Antionetta works as a cogestora now is a testament to her character, to the amount of incredibly hard work she has put in to improving her life, and a good reflection upon the excellent guidance that Medellín Solidaria was able to give her. I interviewed Maria Antionetta for 30 minutes or so, and I can attest: she has worked, from my perspective, an equivalent of a few lifetimes. She has seen things I can never dream of, and likely done things that I would not have been able to do. By this I have been humbled, and as such, I continue to marvel at this organization. I feel like I’ve found a wonder of the world. 

So as word spreads that Medellín Solidaria is truly an organization that can effect change and improve the quality of life of the extremely poor residents of Medellín, the chain will grow and eventually all of the barrios of city will have touched the helping hand of the program. Never have I been so proud to work with, study and familiarize myself with a group of people than the men and women of Medellín Solidaria. I think that what they are doing is a phenomenal feat, and I hope that this documentary I have made will make them proud of what they do as well as show, to the world, how special this program really is. They give everyone they touch hope. Even an outsider such as myself, who couldn’t possibly understand the intricacies and behind the scenes activity of the incredibly complex situation that is Medellín’s division of extremely poor residents, I have hope that with an organization such as Medellín Solidaria in motion, the city is in great hands. 

• • • 

Although I did not work directly with cogestoras or cogestores, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the administrative building of Medellín Solidaria, called Sede Prado. The building was the old mansion of Sergio Fajardo, but as of late, it has been converted into the headquarters of Medellín Solidaria. It’s beautiful, with air-conditioned and spacious courtyards and office rooms, and comfy arm chairs in the reception area. The room that this picture was taken in houses the communications division of Medellín Solidaria. I don’t really know everybody in the picture too well, but I know I will get to know them better as I spend more time with them. Oscar is in the back with his hand up, and Lucho is the guy standing on the chair. These are two of my closest friends and mentors in the program at the moment. Oscar helps me with essentially anything and everything I need concerning the interviews, and Lucho is always there to ask me how my day is going, chat about music (he loves Pink Floyd – great choice) and help me if Oscar isn’t available. This picture was taken on Lucho’s birthday, and I got a ton of footage of the shindig – I told him I’d make a quick, short video for him. I choose this image primarily to remind me of how fun these people are, how the Colombian culture permits fun and hard work to coexist, and how included I felt in this office. I was treated like part of the family. Everyday I see these men and women working until the drop, for the betterment of people that they may never meet. Of course it’s a way for them to make money, but I believe that this is more than a job to them. To Oscar and Lucho, it definitely seems so. I think that one of the best things Lucho said to the group at his little party with threw for him was: “Soy joven en el espíritu.” I am young in spirit. I think that if I learn to live with that attitude, I’ll be set in life. He’s a wise man, that Lucho. I am so happy that I get to spend the next few weeks with these wonderful people. I really hope that I can make them proud with the final product. I believe that I’m starting to understand what this program is about, but I’m definitely in need of a deeper perspective if I hope to create a half-thoughtful video. We shall see. 

Nikita

If there is one thing I can take away from my experience here with DukeEngage, it is my friendship with Lina. Lina is my cogestora (social worker), who I work with when I go into the neighborhoods to interview families. When Lina and I walk through the unpaved streets, and climb precarious steps to get to the homes that rest atop the mountains of Medellín, children playing on the street stop to run to her, women on balconies call to her, and the old men who sit at every corner shop speak to her. She has made it a point to blur the line between her professional and personal life. Every neighborhood that she visits has become as familiar to her as the back of her hand, and every family she helps has become a part of her own. This is immensely helpful because I am able to enter these homes with no formality, and blend in at Lina's side. 

Being a cogestora for Medellín Solidaria can be both emotionally and physically difficult. Lina and I spend hours in each home, long after the paperwork is put away, to sit and listen and enjoy the company of the families we are with. Yet, to get to these houses, we must climb steep terrain, and Lina's joints have been bothering her as of late. So, for the past few weeks, I have been accompanying her to a small home that serves as a nutritional center for HerbaLife. The first day, we walked into the small, crowded room to find at least ten people sitting, sipping their HerbaLife smoothies, and talking. Oddly enough, people generally assume I am Colombian when I meet them. I go through entire conversations with people, and as long as I speak very little Spanish, they cannot detect that I am an extranjera. So, Lina has taken it upon herself to introduce me as Nikita, from India. This is completely accurate, but it leads people to believe that I have come directly from India to Colombia. I have been shocked by the reactions because every person I have met here has had a genuine interest in learning about my culture, my beliefs, and my country. Without Lina, I may have gone through this program creating unequal relationships with the families and friends I have encountered. I know their stories and their backgrounds, but now, they know mine, as well. 

The people in the room were all looking to lead healthier lives through the help of HerbaLife, and Lina mentioned I was a vegetarian. People generally have adverse reactions to this. Generally, people try and become my nutritionist, tell me how delicious meat is, or just find it very odd. Every single person in the room asked me legitimate questions about my lifestyle, and how they could incorporate aspects of it into their own for health reasons. 

This has happened every time Lina has mentioned I am from India. I have had intense, amazing conversations with the Colombians I encounter about poverty in my country and poverty in theirs, women's rights, domestic abuse, arranged marriage, child pregnancy, and beyond. I have never had these conversations with people who actually face these issues as their everyday reality. When speaking about early marriages and the lack of opportunities for women, I am speaking with a woman whose 14 year old daughter is struggling with this very issue. When speaking about domestic abuse and divorce, I am speaking with a woman who has had the strength to leave, when I know many back home who cannot due to cultural implications. 

When I originally starting looking at DukeEngage programs, they seemed to be in faraway countries with cultures and issues different than my own. Yet, there are three programs just in India. The faces used to advertise international aid, volunteering, poverty, and crisis are often foreign or exotic, but many times, they are faces similar to mine. I am grateful to Lina for allowing me to foster these relationships and conversations with the people I have met in Colombia. I have come to know them thanks to DukeEngage, and they have come to know me thanks to Lina.

Ryan

I took this photo with my iPhone, after the cogestora I'm working with told me it was safe, so it has a fairly wide angle. From the bottom to the top of the image, as the vibrant, vigorous plants in the foreground give way to the houses that make their way almost to the top of the Andes mountains, you can see both micro and macro aspects of the neighborhood I'm working in. I think the colors, elevation, and type of homes are a good representation of what you might see walking around the community.

But what interested me about this scene actually constitutes a fairly small portion of it—the sign right in the middle that says, in English, "my neighborhood is full of life." My first reaction to the sign was cynical: That's just like saying "my beach is full of fun," I thought, or "my city is full of intelligence."

But then I noticed the rope.

The sign is attached to what appears to be a stake, but instead of being placed in the ground, it's neatly tied to a tree. The logos at the bottom show that it was sponsored by the Alcaldía, the mayor's office, but the sign's positioning implies to me that someone outside of the city government either brought the sign to this location, or wasn't satisfied with its initial placement. Either way, the sign's elevation, and its deliberate framing with neatly-trimmed plants, seems to show that someone cared enough about its message to make sure it's not only visible, but noticed.

The US has signs with normative messages like this too, but ours tend to be negative, in the sense of telling people not to do something: Don't steal, because there's a neighborhood watch program; don't just walk away when your dog uses the bathroom. To me, this sign has a similar moral connotation, but expresses it in a positive sense. And although using a first-person perspective can often feel artificial, I think it adds a sense of responsibility to this sign: "this is your neighborhood too, and don't mess it up."

The message also seems to reflect how the six families I've interviewed feel about the neighborhood. Nobody said it was perfect, but some noted its evolution in the past two decades, and everyone talked about its respectful residents and beneficial community programs. That is, it doesn't seem to be a sign that the government placed in a random location, either as a propagandistic reminder of the city's services or as a heavy-handed attempt to coerce some sort of positive change. To me, it feels like something that residents—or at least one resident—has adopted and truly believes.

• • •

"You probably didn't expect to come all the way on this trip and make donuts," said their neighbor, leaning on the doorway as I clumsily molded the golden-hued dough. Just a few minutes earlier, Guillermo—whose business making and selling donuts and churros is the family's main source of income—asked if I wanted to learn how to make one. It looked simple enough, so I handed my camera to Sandra, my cogestora from Medellín Solidaria, and went to the kitchen to wash my hands.

But as soon as I started flattening the ball of dough with the rolling pin, I realized replicating the rhythm that Guillermo has developed over five years would be impossible. I had filmed this process from above, from behind, and close up, but even with Guillermo's patient, repeated instructions, I was surprised at how clumsy my hands felt in shaping this tiny piece of dough. In the end, my donut looked pretty similar to the others, although I'm sure Guillermo could've made a donut in just the time it took me to scoop and spread the arequipe.

Over the course of the visit, he mentioned many times how important it was that each donut weighs the same, has the same yellow color, and is shaped the same way—customers won't want to buy the disfigured or flimsy anomalies. In a business where each of the 200 pastries he makes daily is important to the family's livelihood, letting me shape some of the dough was truly an act of trust.

And that small moment of trust is, for me, what makes work like this so special. It wasn't about the documentary—the camera wasn't even in my hands, and I wasn't thinking about how the shot would be framed—and only tangentially was it related to the narrative that, just minutes before, I had been thinking about how I might assemble. It was a moment when our conversation was unencumbered by a camera between us, when he could look at me without staring into a giant lens, and when I could look at him without wondering if he was in focus and listen to him without being concerned about the audio levels. This was storytelling in perhaps its purest form, a physical transfer of Guillermo's story from his hands to mine.

Vaib

In any given direction and at any given time, a flight of stairs is only a glance away when one is in the barrios. The unnoticeable essential of this environment, a remnant of the once lush, steep landscape, these flights are anything but the archetype of a staircase. The randomized heights and widths of steps take all newcomers to the barrios by shock. While the sights of barrio life distract them, they narrowly avoid tripping down flights of stairs. The perilous nature of these stairs beguiles these folk, myself included. In a layered manner similar to MC Escher's Relativity, the flights lead circuitous routes, taking me up, down, and across the corridors of Comuna 3 life. In this image, two sets of stairs give credence to the many shapes and designs stairs take on in this environment. The symbols for barrio life they have become. Regardless of what one has in his or her own house, one's stairs truly reflect your mobility in the barrios: from mud pathways to rotting wood steps to a cement form to a tiled beauty, add the additional railing or two, a ramp for your motorcycle. Different from a stairway to heaven, these stairs benefit from the ideal of permanence, as each one supplants the formation of a home and a community. With each new staircase built, a community gathers, and the barrios become the slightest bit more habitable for the residents themselves. Truly a window the the homes and the families behind them, stairs, despite their ubiquity, add not only class and inequality to the barrios but a solace for community.

• • •

This is Marta, a member of the first family I interviewed here in Medellín. Marta began studying English two years ago, and cites her life dream as mastering English and traveling to Miami and the rest of the world. Beyond these dreams, Marta works in the small ice-cream shop inside her house, having already raised two kids. This is her after she just finished her interview. This is her after her first time talking to an American. 

Education serves as the focus of many Medellín Solidaria programs, whether for general wellbeing or for worldly knowledge everyone should know. But who draws the line of purpose? Should Marta really be learning English, or should she be concentrating her efforts to ameliorate her life in the barrios? 

This past week, I've listened in on discussions about the extremely successful Projecto Boston Medellín, where a number of Colombian artists are helped through the US visa process to get the chance to show their art in Boston. I've gleamed so much more about the harsh and cruel nature of US visa applications, especially for Colombians. Colombia has one of the highest visa denial rates in the world, but still, within the small world of the barrios, Marta still dreams of the USA. 

I find it astonishing, the power that English holds on Medellín. From the highest social classes to the less fortunate people of the barrios like Marta, English offers an opportunity to join American businesses and to progress or create a new life for oneself.

Perceptions of time | Percepciones de tiempo

Bailey

tiempo

I count each grain in the hourglass,

The finite seconds

Advancing like soldiers,

Confined by transparency.

But now I live

In a sandbox.

The mutable grains are

Now a turret, now a trench

And I must learn

To play.

I’ve always been known for my disciplined time-management. My room is never without a calendar, my daily commitments exploding off the page in color-coded Sharpie. I make to-do lists constantly, sometimes separating the days into hours, setting alarms and creating deadlines for myself to complete tasks. I like plans, and when I make plans with my compañeros, I expect that discussion to hold good until the moment of reckoning. I expect them to perceive the day as I do, each second assigned to a purpose. But they don’t. Colombian time is different. They may be an hour late, and arrive with none of the apologies and chagrin that I expect. They may call, proposing to do something totally different. Other times, they may not show up at all. When I lack a discernible plan, I become stressed. Agitated. Vindictive, even. I become filled with guilt at the thought of not being productive, of not using my time effectively. I become frustrated by the changes, the disappointment. However, after two weeks in Medellín, I’ve eased toward enjoying the amorphous nature of time in this place. The “rhythm of this city,” as Tam calls it, has forced me to confront my anxieties about time and relish spontaneous possibility.

Browne

I have no sense of direction. My soccer team nicknamed me Nemo because I always got lost driving to away games and arrived late. However, in Colombia, I am never the late one. Seven thirty means “five or so minutes past seven thirty” and noon means, “whenever you feel like it”. Even when meeting with my cogestora for work, she once arrived thirty minutes late. If roles had been reversed, I would have called her multiple times to let her know I was running late, apologized infinitely, and begged on my knees for forgiveness. She, however, called once, and that was that. Concepts of time change with cities, with cultures. I have experienced these changes before when living in other cultures, so I have learned the importance of understanding them. Understanding a concept of time will allow a better understanding of the culture, and also will prevent you from waiting nervously by yourself for thirty minutes in a metro station.

Elysia

Time is different here. I think the best way to explain it is that the city has a different rhythm, something I've heard several times already. Every place, and every person, has a different understanding of time. I've never really been good with time. At home in the U.S., at least where I'm from, time is a stricter concept, almost a rule to be followed. Appointments are set, you're expected to arrive on time, early even. If you're late to meet your friends, they will call you and text you (repeatedly), and when you finally arrive, they'll undoubtedly be somewhere between irritated to infuriated with you. 

Here in Colombia, time is different. Meeting and appointment times can change (will change), multiple times even. Your friends might tell you to meet them in 30 minutes at this park, then call 20 minutes later to reschedule and change the meeting point. And if you happen to arrive late, they greet you the same way, with a friendly smile and hug and kiss on the cheek. It didn't take me long to get used to this concept of time here in Colombia, because it's something that I, personally, am more comfortable with. I like this sense of flexibility, this laidback outlook. And I think that it's important to acclimatize to this different relationship with time, just as you would with change of time zone or altitude. Time can be intrinsically linked to culture, and in Colombia, I think that to become part of the culture you must accept this new concept of time.  

Jack

Paisa Pizza: Chorizo, sweet corn, cheese and guacamole

My concept of time has changed most noticeably when I’m eating. (In juxtaposing this blog post with most of my other ones, it becomes apparent that food is the only thing I think about ever.) Meals here are enjoyed slowly. Two paced courses and a cafecita to wrap things up for 10mil pesos is what I’ve come to expect every lunch, and I love it. No pushy waiters trying to turn tables; no “here’s your check even though you never asked for it”; no angry people waiting for your table. Here, eating has felt like a more social experience. It’s less concentrated on getting in and getting out and more concentrated on enjoying your company, something we forget to do in the states too often.

Aside from eating, so-called “Paisa Time” has not been particularly difficult to adjust to. Fredy, the social worker I work with, is always punctual. The compañeros are usually at our meeting spot before we are. Everyone I've met has done all they can to make us as comfortable as possible, and I'm so thankful for all of them!

Kate

PASSING TIME WITH DIFFERENT VERBS

I pass some time today

sitting on the ocean

looking at watery reflections

and wiggling sensations

that might already be sliding away

reflecting on work in the field

with mi cogestora Luz

Luz passes the time with these families,

I have some time,

I have eight weeks of time to make videos, of stories,

I have eight weeks to make videos, of stories,

I am here to make videos, of stories,

I am here with time

learning not to spend it.

As we move into the mountains,

as we are received into homes,

as we sit with families,

Lucita moves with a patience and a stillness that at first felt “slow,”

to me,

protracted. 

My nature is to do.

To fill my time tenaciously, persistently, stubbornly—perhaps

even redundantly as it comes to that—

doggedly, until I am dog-tired.

To fill my time in the bursts of a metronome that is always set for the Macarena. 

Heyyyy Macarena do do dodo doo

Like the dialogue of one of Aaron Sorkin’s shows.

When he writes,

     he thinks

          of dialogue

               as music.

                    He composes

                         scripts

                              to sing,

                                   for their sound,

                                        for their crescendo.

When he was nine

he saw, or rather heard,

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?

He didn’t get the story,

big-words, grown-up fights,

but he liked the music and the tempo.

He decided he wanted to recreate it.

One of his six rules of filmmaking is:

“It’s Less Important That The Audience Knows What Characters Are Talking About”

Scenes set in cramped minutes

or in the express moments of a co-worker dropping off a memo

“It’s Less Important That The Audience Knows What Characters Are Talking About”

They bustle, and hustle,

through hallways

exchanging words like floor-traders on Wall Street.

And I, the audience, so easily delightable,

am enraptured.

By the pace,

by the punching bass

by delicious electric haste

While my parents shake their heads

They boast more nuanced taste

for grace and harmonizing.

Would you turn that down?!

Why! What are they listening for… Isn’t this the music—

anyway?

Volume

To fill my ears like time, we fill time.

Filling— not to be confused for feeling.

Sorkin’s people are bustling, and hustling,

through hallways

exchanging words like floor-traders on Wall Street.

And I, America, so easily delightable,

am enraptured

By the likeness to

machines

clicking gears

and industry.

This big cabooming show

of productivity,

and progress.

I read once that American vacuums

are 60% louder than their foreign counterparts.

Some sly market researcher

found customer satisfaction

to be greater

with increased noise.

I’d believe it.

My business is to do

with time.

To catch and ride time like a surfer chasing a wave.

Focused

beach days

started in the morning, before the nappers

and their colorful umbrellas.

Ocean hours I prepared to bundle, and appraise

in retrospect.

A day lost or made by that perfect ride.

I like to catch and ride time like a surfer chases a wave.

It’s a profitable way to spend it.

[“It’s Less Important That The Audience Knows What Characters Are Talking About”]

But I don’t think Luz agrees

she massages time as it warms up

to revealing just “What Characters Are Talking About”

Because in this kind of storytelling

there’s no script

and it is important.

I’m spending my summer here

Except there’s no Spanish translation for spending time

I settle instead

for the verb

“pasar.”

Aqui, para pasar las horas en las olas.

I observe Lucita’s smoother pace

a good lesson, a good exercise for me.

An exercise in patience

And it’s a respectable way to spend the day. 

Lucita moves with a patience and a stillness that at first felt “slow”

During our visits, I eye

this protracted time

this humility

and the way things come up.

When Luz is rolling time between her fingertips, as if it were liquid silver,

Un-uttered hardships, shelved out of mind, surface

I can see them swimming behind sturdy eyes

and sometimes I get to hear them.

Magnetic pain awoken as if Luz carried marbles in her pockets.

Desplazados

toughened, persistent.

I get the sense

Time and place, space, for unloading

personal concern and need,

are eyed somewhat-skeptically here

in these homes

perhaps.

But somehow I’m seeing vulnerability

and honesty and the type of strength that can only be seen when vulnerability gets revealed too—

the type of vulnerability mothers hide from their children.

This,

and tears, and soothing lies to children, and silent fierce entreaties

surface over tinto

when we’re on Luz’s time.

On a bad day for surfing

the still sea

seems to slip on, extending endlessly

uninterrupted in all directions

sometimes, when it’s lunch time in my barrio,

or with Luz,

I feel that time

for a second

extends forever in both directions

around me

forwards and backwards too.

I’m not skipping through time

but a jump-rope might still, be going,

somewhere

and I’m

Breathing back and forth in the belly of its swinging parabola.

I wonder what else might surface as I pass time waiting for my next wave.

Nick

I’m generally a late person; for me, this is a simple truth. Time is something that I’ve always taken seriously, but often this seriousness concerned only my time and nobody else’s. Selfish, yes, but it is the truth. Thus, at Duke and prior, I would often find myself running from place to place, trying to spend the most amount of time at one activity without infringing too heavily on the time of the following one, but usually these shenanigans would end with my water polo coach shooting a stern look at me and tapping his watch as I’d come huffing and puffing onto the pool deck 10 minutes late. I like to think that I take advantage of every single second I have, but unfortunately, this is often at the expense of other people’s time. And I have noticed this, and have been intending to fix this flaw for some time now, but to no avail. However, upon arriving to Medellín, a new concept of time has dawned on me. At nearly every event that I have attended here in Medellín, I have arrived at least five minutes or precisely on time. This is a new development, and Jota will likely laugh at my qualifying word “nearly.” The first meeting we had, I stumbled to our meeting spot about 15 minutes late – my clock was wrong, I swear. But regardless, I was late – and I easily live the closest out of the entire group to this spot. Maybe it’s because Jota is paisa, but recently this new desire to be a Colombian has taken control of life. I even got my haircut in ‘paisa’ (Colombian) style. All of my meetings or rendezvous with any Colombian, whether that is with my compañeros or my ‘jefes’ at Medellín Solidaria’s Prado Centro (which is where I am working currently), has been characterized by promptness on the part of the Colombian, and if there was going to be any alteration to this promptness, the Colombian would notify me, so as to make sure that I wasn’t sitting somewhere for an hour wondering what I was doing with my life. This characteristic promptness of the Colombians I’ve thus far met struck me, and it fits perfectly with this incredibly gracious culture the paisas have here; this is to say that they are a very emotionally aware people, they care about you and how you perceive them even before they really get to know you, and I think this is very special. So, to this end, I’ve not been late to a single meeting since then, due to my desire to show the world a little more respect than I’ve been giving it. In America I could get by with this and not make anything of it, but for some reason, I get the feeling that if I were late to every meeting here in Colombia, I would just perpetuate a stereotype or insult someone, which is the last thing I want to do. I hope that this habit sticks with me even after I leave Colombia. 

Niki

I wait by the entrance of the metro station, and I wait, and I wait. I notice a tired woman leaning against the concrete wall. She is wearing comfortable, worn sneakers that remain white despite their age, and bright, rosy scrubs. She takes out a thin, crumpled piece of paper, and begins folding. She continues this way for a couple of minutes, and I see that she has created a delicate paper flower. The woman places it on the railing beside her, and exits the station. When she turns around, there is only a hollow space where her arm should have been.  An elderly gentleman places his wrinkled hand on that of a passing boy wearing large headphones. The boy does not hear him at first, but stops to the touch. The man borrows his phone, and exchanges a few words for a cigarette. An Afro-Colombian man with dark sunglasses approaches the ticket booth, and hands his lime green metro card to a fair, young security guard. The guard gently takes his arm, and tenderly guides him up the stairs onto the platform. These are the minutes I spent waiting. In these thirty minutes while I wait for my cogestora to arrive, I watch and I learn. Time is relative, and I feel as if time in Colombia allows one to take in the world and express one’s humanity.  I do not feel as if my time has been wasted while I wait.

Vaib

My arepizza (Arepa-Pizza), made with care, fits in my pocket. Its bright colors and delectable seasonings blur the effort put into it, much like how I have found family life in Colombia. Despite the amount of time spent on making dinner and setting the table, the large focus of the time is spent on the conversations had and memories made during dinner. It's turning a blind eye to the efforts that go into the day, but here in Colombia, I feel less hurried as my life is mostly full of those happy memories.