The Beginning

I have been in Bogota, Colombia for a period 6 days now, most of which has been characterised by the question 'Where do I start'?' Writing this blog, for example; there is no way I have the energy to write personally to everyone who wants to know what Bogota is like, but then again, when faced with a blank window to record the last week, it feels like everything I want to say is inadequate.

So I’ll start with the basics:

I am staying with an old friend of my father's, Timothy Ross, and his wife Sarita. He and my father worked together here in Colombia years ago. Timothy used to be a journalist and photographer for many major western publications and has spent significant amounts of time reporting from and travelling with many political and military groups in Colombia. Now with various medical and psychological qualifications, he is the creator and director of the charity Fenix.

Fenix is a street outreach program which sponsors (through foreign and private patrons) young women who have had particularly bad experiences during their short lives. This includes abusive parents/partners, pregnancies and terminations, prostitution, rape, neglect, substance abuse and trauma of one description or another.
The organisation is not huge and is run with the help of professional psychologists, therapists and also by the girls who benefit from the 'godparents' who sponser them. They are in education and are training to become professionals such as doctors, nurses and dentists, all with the intention of helping their original communities. As a result, it only sponsors those with the intelligence to achieve professional status.

However, the outreach part of the program means that Fenix is a huge support for a wide network of children, adolescents and young people. Timothy and Sarita's flat is the main meeting area and almost drop-in center for anyone who may be having a crisis or who are just in need of a bit of company. For example, yesterday a pregnant nineteen-year-old and her 14 year old sister came by in the evening for a couple of hours. She wanted to voice her qualms about her pregnancy and get advice on exercise and stretching, as well as use the computer to do some study. Timothy, as a trained nurse, fed her, chatted to her, encouraged her, showed her what exercises to do and also how to stimulate the baby from its 'sleep' which is apparently not a good state for the fetus to be in. This involved playing classical music and blowing raspberries on her belly!

Obviously, working with women like this means that everyone in Fenix must be well versed in and very comfortable with talking about and explaining all manner of physical and psychological issues. I have become very used to listening to and discussing STD's, sexual relations and use of birth control freely and with examples. It’s a big change from the British social norms.

Fenix is affiliated with a large network of similar programs, two of which are called 'El Refugio' and 'Procrear'. I will be working mainly with El Refugio before I get into the serious street work of Procrear and Fenix. My street Spanish and social experience are simply not up to it.

El Refugio is a refuge centre for teenagers who need the asylum. I met the kids yesterday and had such a good time. They are sweet, funny, interested and energetic, and all desperately fascinated by the 'gringa' (foreigner/white person) that would be working with them. I spent an hour or two answering their questions about the fashion, music, lifestyle, sports, countryside, weather and people of the UK. They wanted to know who my friends and family were, what their names were, what they looked like. Was everyone tall over there? Why do I have different coloured skin? Does everyone have blue eyes over there? There was no persuading them mine are grey, that just would not do.

They are all between about 14 and 18 but, due to the circumstances of their histories, have a mental age which is slightly lower, so they love clowning around but also have a simultaneously candid but timid approach which can be a bit surprising. Mid-conversation about my family, one 16-year-old told me that she had a baby, and also suffered from HIV.

This was shocking, even after hearing all sorts of information and stories from Timothy. What was most unsettling for me though was how I should react to such information. As someone from such a very different upbringing, with opportunities they have never had and probably never will have, with all the advantage of my health and education and family, a really debilitating sense of inadequacy hit me. I didn't show this and luckily the girl inadvertently offered me a lifeline by asking whether they had HIV and AIDS in the UK, which kept the conversation upbeat and flowing. One homosexual boy joined in and started asking me about what type of gay bars they had over there, were they fun, were they safe? Edinburgh people, I related the delights of GHQ! It was just such a normal question for a teenage boy who wanted to start going out and meeting people.

Overall, the experience was really touching and I’m looking forward to working with them three times a week. I will be giving them an English class for an hour and then getting them outside to do some exercise. Most of them are a little overweight due to a sedentary lifestyle and high carbohydrate intake (lunch consisted of rice, yucca, oats and potato, with a tiny bit of meat)
I have no official qualifications to help these people so it is all about being opportunistic and using what you do know to help them. I never imagined that all the nutrition and excercise knowledge I gained from a teenage insecurity would be such a help here.

There have been many other meetings and experiences over the week that have been complete eye-openers. All I can do is watch and learn from people far more experienced and qualified than myself, and hopefully I will find my own niche at some point.

Apart from the work, Bogota itself is busy, dirty, noisy, full of people, markets and hectic bus routes. The atmosphere is brilliant, the people charming and the city completely polarised between rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, junk and treasure. Timothy took me to the flea market last Sunday which I loved, and had my first experience of how empowering a police uniform can be for a young Colombian: there really was no getting rid of dear old Andres, the marginally elevated officer who demonstrated how policing was more about personal status rather than enforcing the law. Next time, I'm definitely 'married'.
Timothy also showed me the bookseller’s area of the city. It is a warren of second hand book shops and arcades which include upstairs lounges with high ceilings and wooden floors, old leather chairs and thousands and thousands of books, so it is pretty easy to lose yourself for a day. I'm very pleased with this discovery.

As for a social network, I was pretty convinced that would be put on hold for the duration of my stay here. On the contrary. On my first night here, Amy, an American Fulbright student from the states invited me to a 'cookout' for one of her friends. Bearing in mind my paranoia was such that I hadn't even left the flat yet, I was a little bit nervous about going out drinking that night. Even so, I ended up meeting a brilliant group of young Americans and Colombians who are mainly here on Fulbright scholarships and so are all really motivated and intelligent. One girl, Caroline, has only been here a month and we really got on. She introduced me to her Colombian flatmate, Fabio, and we all met up the other day to see the Northern part of the city (the rich side) where they live. She also taught me to use the buses, which are mad, and I had my first Juan Valdez coffee. With baileys. Yum.

Hannah, another ex-Fulbright who lives with Amy, took me to visit her boyfriend's parents the other day and give them an English lesson. They were the loveliest couple, extremely in love after about 30 years together and so eager that I should feel comfortable with coming to them for anything. I watched Hannah give them an English lesson, which was so useful because she is a brilliant teacher. Afterwards, the parents gave us, and some other friends of Hannah's who joined us, this sweet drink made from sugar cane. You drop cheese into it to melt, then fish it out with a spoon and eat it with bread! It's just little things like this, which probably sound really boring, that make such a difference to how you feel about a place.

I have found a beautiful apartment in La Candelaria, the old part of town. It has a kitchen, sofa and fireplace downstairs (can be a little cold here due to the altitude) and a spacious room and bathroom upstairs with latticed windows and wooden flooring. I will be living on my own but in a complex with people. And it is really secure which is encouraging.

I'm looking forward to moving in but have really enjoyed living with Timothy and hearing all he has to say about his life, the work he does, and the people he works with. He has been given me a mound of literature by all the famous psychologists regarding sexual abuse, trauma-organised systems and violence to get through, and I have spent a few evenings reading without even noticing the time passing. Apart from the books being well written and interesting, the theory can be applied to the everyday practice of what I'm doing which isn't really something I have ever experienced before. I have never been much into psychology, but now I have started, I am loving the research opportunity and learning a lot. I just wish that, apart from the Spanish side of things, it was more relevant to my degree. 'Literature' just sounds a bit pathetic in comparison.

So that roughly summarises the last week, though there is plenty more I could ramble on about. I feel pretty wide-eyed at the moment, there is a lot to take in, and it is frustrating beginning to realise how much I don't know. I miss home a bit and appreciate any contact, but my energy levels have begun to meet there match out here, which is a fairly big deal and makes me happy :)