A plane couldn’t have a better name than this one. With the Dreamliner I leave from Madrid to Bogotá: the city of stars. Off to a continent yet unexplored by me. But I hope I can discover a bit, and just the right bit, of South America during my six days in the country of Colombia. Before take off, I really felt like a girl alone, but I soon discovered that you are never really truly alone here in Colombia. Where ‘crazy Colombians’, as my new Colombian friends call their people, are all around you. Via Bogotá and Cartagena, I discovered the true warmth of this country.
Central and South America are regions that fascinated me a lot when I was a kid. The Mayans, the Incas and the Aztects and their cultural heritage.. the tropical rainforest and her inhabitants.. None were left undiscussed during my elementary school presentations. And then there was my slight obsession with the Colombian Shakira when I was around 12 years old. Although my desire for travel shifted to other regions, such as Southeast Asia, the opportunity given to me to go to Colombia was one I gladly took. That opportunity was a conference related to my research. And so, starting somewhat as an impuls, I was to explore Colombia in six days, or even four if you don’t count the two days I spend at the campus area, attending the conference at Universidad de la Salle.
With the Dreamliner to the city of stars
I’m leaving to the capital of Colombia on the 21st of May, 2017, for a conference on responses to ecological crises at Universidad de la Salle, in the Chapinero-region of Bogotá. I’ll be giving a presentation on eco-conscious lifestyle and consumption among Indonesians at this two-day event. It’s around 12 o’clock in the afternoon when I hop on a plane from Schiphol to Madrid.
There I have a transit to Bogotá, using the Dreamliner of Air Europa. I arrive at El Dorado Airport at 6 o’clock in the evening and I am in a car talking with the professor that organises the conference an hour later. The next day I wake up looking over cloudy and rainy Bogotá from my room at the campus of Universidad de la Salle in Chapinero. I try to let it sink in that I am at this, to me yet, strange continent. Every time I travel I try to allow myself to have such a moment and it always makes me realise how grateful I am for these kind of opportunities.
Presenting at a university in Bogotá
Although I will spend the next two days mostly in a classroom at this campus, the experiences are worth a lot. I meet some wonderful professors from Colombia, Argentina and Canada and despite the language barrier sometimes, they manage to touch my soul with their kindness and wisdom. I explore the campus and take a photo of the beautiful windows of the church at the campus, the first thing I photograph here in Colombia. I enjoy a Colombian student lunch that is completely vegetarian. And I learn a lot from the other attendees at the conference.
At the end of the second day, we are invited to perform a spiritual dance together. The speaker slowly lays down an interesting mandala of flags and candles and starts playing the guitar. “Come here and join me”, he says. He begins to sing and explains to us the moves of the dance of universal peace. In a spiritual and indigenous Colombian dance we lose ourselves in the rhythm and in each other. I am blessed and bless others using a language I don’t know and moving my body in ways that seem strange to me. At the end, we hug each other. The intellectual days are topped off with a presentation of four professors, discussing the Pope and his view on climate change and ecology.
