It’s been an amazing birthday week, the kind of week that has me reflecting on all the changes in my life that have brought me to where I am today. One of the greatest changes by far has been all of the transformations and confrontations with self I have made since living in Colombia.
Before, I was never one to socialize among coworkers. I kept my head down and my eyes on my work. I felt afraid to show who I really was most days because I wasn’t sure if anyone I worked with would be able to relate to me. As a result, I stole from myself the opportunities to form bonds with my coworkers and create lasting friendships. I also struggled to define limits in my romantic life. I spent more time spinning my wheels than actually acting with the end result in mind, and that was mainly due to self-doubt and insecurity.
Last year, I was still green to living in another country. I didn’t know many people – I barely knew my coworkers. I mostly spent time with a girl that lived in the same house as me and took care of the kids and the chores (we became friends and have been ever since!). I was far from home and at moments very lonely. But with a few spontaneous invites – and then spontaneously accepting them – from my coworkers, I slowly began to go out and really experience the culture of Valledupar and form relationships which became key to my self-esteem and growth.
I’ve learned that ex-pat camaraderie is strong, even if you don’t come from the same country. My first step outside of my comfort zone in Colombia came when I made and shared king cake with a few coworkers. One of them, Noel, took interest in the place I’m from, Louisiana, mainly for the food and music, and I couldn’t help but open up, little by little. So we began to hang out more, and from there we decided to make a king cake together and have a get-together to share it. Since then, he has become more of a brother than a friend, a trusted confidant that has seen me through hard times, listened to me and my whining, and shared advice with me, and I with him.
Slowly, I allowed myself to get to know my coworkers more and stopped closing myself into my classroom and focusing only on the serious aspects of work. It didn’t hurt that I also finished my TEFL certification around the same time and suddenly had the time to go out and socialize. By keeping my eyes peeled for opportunities to go out and explore my new home, I began to get to know a Colombian teacher at that time working in Prekinder in the school, Osiris, and a young woman from Nigeria working in Nursery named Dami. Osiris spontaneously invited us to go hiking up the local lookout point, Cerro Ecce Homo, one weekend in February and from there the three of us became good friends.
Shortly after that, the adventures began. Dami, Noel (my British brother), and I along with a Colombian friend spent a weekend in Nabusimake, an isolated indigenous village nestled in the Sierra Nevada. We slept in tiny bunk beds in a cozy cottage and built a fire outside to make our dinner under the night sky, sharing music and laughter throughout. It’s funny how strangers can become so close in so little time. But near-death experiences will do that. During that particular trip, when we decided to go back to Valledupar, it had started drizzling. Of course we thought, who cares? We were ready to get back and rest and prepare for another exhausting week of work. However, once we were zig-zagging and swerving up and down steep, narrow mountain passes covered in mud and clay, we swiftly realized the err of our thinking. We were screaming in the land rover and hiking up along side it, trying not to get hit, all the while and not to slip down the mountain in turns. It really brought a whole new layer of meaning to our friendship, as surviving a near-death situation usually does.
In this way, many of my coworkers also became great travel companions since we all have pretty much the same aspirations to get out of Valledupar and explore. Last year I managed to either plan or be involved in 4 different trips, including a weekend in Palomino and a whole week discovering coastal cities like Santa Marta, Barranquilla, and Cartagena, and then later go further South to Ocaña – but I’ll have to dedicate another post to those trips.
Then there were all of our little get-togethers. We would go to the large house that Noel and his brother lived in, a hostel of sorts because it housed many temporary or short-term tenants, and make food and blast music. At the end, we would always get fussed at by the house owners for turning the house into a discoteca (which, by the way, we now practically live in one since getting our own house), but we rolled our eyes and turned down the music, choosing to ignore the negativity and keep enjoying each other’s company. It’s not like we don’t suffer through the hours on end of blaring Vallenato music constantly.
Our team has always been close knit. There was birthday party after surprise party throughout the last school year that added to my sense of integration with my coworkers. Even my birthday was celebrated as a surprise which was and wasn’t a total surprise since there was a group dedicated to doing just that last year. Still, that party was one of the most beautiful moments yet and continues to stick with me to this day. After all, I could have never imagined that a group of virtual strangers would take me in, buy me a cake and booze, and celebrate my special day as if we had known each other for more than a couple of months.
People here have sincerely taken me by the heart and the hand and welcomed me into their lives. I began to dance and be myself among these diverse people. We traveled together, from the beaches of Palomino to the rainy streets of Bogota, to the Walled City of Cartagena. We rang in the New Year together, drank together, and complained together about the injustices we have faced at the school and the shitty discrepancies with our own expectations.
More than anything, I became entirely me this year, while also letting another culture transform me. I felt myself truly adopt the costeño dialect when conversing with my close Colombian friends while also being able to stand up and give presentations in Spanish and English in workshops and trainings. I’ve spoken my mind and stood up for myself and my friends more than once in the face of the aforementioned injustices at the school that range from unfair working conditions and sanctions based on false information and bias. I’ve realized I’m not afraid to be the person that says no, that doesn’t work and it doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve discovered my voice, both personally and professionally.
Now that I’m 26, I’m staring over an intimidating precipice. On one side stand my goals, my mountain, the things I’ve been working toward tirelessly since I was in college, and perhaps even before that. I’ve always been tenacious, and now I feel I’m halfway there. First, I wanted to get out of the country. Before I turned 25, I accomplished that goal and found a job that worked for me. I wanted some semblance of stability, which I have achieved, while still being able to save and travel all at once. Then I wanted to continue my education and explore other avenues of employment. That is the part I’m still working on – mainly with writing and translating, but I also have a desire to break out into work related to human rights, social justice, and international relations, because that is where my passions truly lie. But in the meantime, I have to give myself some credit – I’ve become a full-time, certified teacher, and damn competent one, one that knows her students and does everything she can to help them reach their full potential and learn and to be passionate about learning.
I’ve discovered my capabilities and that I don’t need anybody else in order to feel fulfilled in my life or have significant and extraordinary relationships. I’ve also learned and thoroughly internalized that it does no good to compare my life to others. We all get where we need to go at different times. The key is living our moment one second at a time.
I am now quite content with my close friendships, with the variety of people that share their time with me and support me in a variety of ways. The next step is simply deciding: which direction do I need to go in in order to get closer to my mountain? How can I stop measuring every step and just let go as I fall into my future? Because in the end, all we are doing is falling. Nobody knows where we will end up, as much as we try to plan and plot our stops along the way of this vast journey we call life.
I will say that the spontaneous choices I’ve made have ended up being the most rewarding. When I set my mind to something, from the age of 5 to 25 and beyond, I have always found a way to see it through. And even if the results are not what I expected, I find a way to learn so much that the experience is totally worth it and part of what makes me me.
In Colombia, I’ve encountered some of the most loving and genuine people I have ever known. I’ve also encountered selfish people, rude people, people that are only interested in themselves and think nothing of how that self-interest can affect others. That, however, is the human experience – no matter how much culture shock was locked into that experience, it is not culturally dependent – and learning how to distinguish one group from another is also part of growing up. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this year in Colombia has been like a rite of passage for me in which I came through the other side as a fully-fledged woman that has committed herself to her vision and doesn’t back down in the face of adversity.
That’s the direction I want to continue going: upwards and outwards, to help and to let myself be helped in order to grow and mutually impact others in a positive way. The interconnectedness of people is one of the great lessons I’ve learned here, just how much we can make or break an experience by being involved with each other. For those that have blessed my days with their light, I will be forever grateful. And for those that steal my energy, I am thankful to know how to distinguish them from the genuine people who are worth the effort and simply remove them from my life in order to focus my energy on the people that fan my flames.
Life happens fast. I imagine we all experience different rites of passage throughout life and at different stages. When was yours? When did you look in the mirror and realize that you were no longer pretending to be a self-sufficient, self-aware adult, but that you actually were one, and not just a scared, lost kid trapped in an adult’s body? I’m interested to know what that turning point is for people. But I would say in spite of everything I lived in my two post-university years in California, Colombia has defined that for me. And to the universe, I will be forever grateful for pushing me to leap from that precipice and into a new challenge. May I have the courage to leap some more in all the deciding moments that come my way.
Diario de una Aventurera 