A LESSON OF KINDNESS

by DANIEL MATEO RIVERA ORTIZ (Colombia)

I didn't expect to find Colombia

It was the first and only time I have been so touched in my life. In five days I truly understood how blessed I am and how a sample of love can bring hope and happiness. In July of 2019, I took one of the most memorable trips ever: I traveled to La Guajira, Colombia to visit The Isashimana community. This trip made me experience humility, gratitude, love, and kindness. I had never thought to make a trip to that region of Colombia until a non-profit organization called “fundación dos peces” for which I have volunteered for since 2018, invited me. Between all the social activities of the foundation, they have delivered essential goods and clothing to this community since 2010. La Guajira is a dry, warm, and deserted place, with a scarcity of natural resources, which is also directly affected by corruption and a lack of public spending. When we arrived, the first thing I saw was their infrastructure: houses made about from adobe and wood. At first glance I was not anticipating what I was about to see. We were just dropped off by a medium sized truck. Immediately, I was impacted by a strong reaction by the community. The kids where the first group of people that reached us. They knew that we were arriving that day, and they received us with hugs and told us that they were happy to have us in their homeland. Then they started to thank us for the help that the foundation have been giving them for years. After that remarkable greeting, I was further amazed by how they had prepared for our arrival. In spite of their lack of natural resources, economic development, and their daily struggle to survive, they had built a rudimentary bathroom for us and had been collecting water for about a week and a half. They had arranged the best bedroom available for us. It was the only room that had air conditioning in their whole land for the four nights we were going to spend there. Each day they gave us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a privilege that they don’t usually have. In fact, some families can only afford just a couple of soda crackers and a coffee for the entire day. For the next two days we spent time with the kids at their school, which was led and raised by one of the most determined women I’ve ever known, a woman with a Master’s Degree, a teacher called Rita. This wonderful teacher got the necessary help and attention to build an education center. With her orientation and oversight, we did activities such as dancing, playing, telling stories, hearing about them, and also helping the children to think about what they wanted to be when they grow up. During our stay, the happiness of those toddlers and kids spread to us, but that wasn’t all. On our last two days, we delivered 25 tons of food to different areas, supplies for a bakery project that was being developed, and clothes. We saw how people where so happy and grateful because of the food in their pantries. In some cases it was the first time that they saw items such as beans, peaches, candies, and shoes. Their gratitude filled my heart with a mix of emotions like faith, hope, worry, sadness, and happiness. On our last night, when we arrived back from the delivery, they prepared a ceremony, it was in an open space where they had food served on tables and a kind of mini stage with a great campfire. They showed us their cultural heritage including clothing, customs, artistic expressions, religion, and, regardless of their severely limited resources they gave us gifts, their smiles and handcrafts. But the most important thing they gave us was a night full of gratitude, love, and kindness. Since then, I have felt a desire to continue helping them. Goodness and abundance is not always a matter of money or belongings, it’s from our hearts too, sometimes we forget how blessed we could be and the love that we can share with others. The Isashimana indigenous community gave the best of themselves without expecting anything in return.