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by Salomé- Dior Williams (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Colombia

Home; some say it’s your place of residence, your place of birth, or a place with kin. Others use idioms like “home is where the heart is,” to describe where they belong. This year I travelled to Colombia for the first time; before my trip, I would have agreed with the latter definition of home, but now I see its much deeper than the heart. Home is where your soul is seen, your heart is nurtured and where your body is safe. After many years of saving and planning, my best friend and I committed to making our childhood dreams come true. I was both excited and petrified. It was my first time leaving Europe; nevertheless, we set off 5273 miles across the world to Colombia. Our first stop was Bogota, an urban metropolis in the heart of the Andes. Our time there was brief, but its beauty stayed with me. I remember the exact moment I began to fall in love. At the top of Mt. Monserrate after sun fall, we sat in the church. The tranquil ebony Madonna and child watched over us, I felt at peace. A peace I had never experienced before. It brought a silence that put out the fires of my anxiety, stilled my fears and washed my own prejudices. Later in my trip, I realised that this silence was the absence of my race. For the first time in my life, I blended in, and yet felt ever so seen. As the days and cities passed, we found ourselves in countless museums that echoed the same story. Upon our arrival at the infamous Museum of Memories the first plaque we saw read “Afro-Colombians and indigenous people have been uprooted from their own paradises where their history and roots are anchored. They have been forced to be a part of other people’s wars.” Now many would read that and think “oh how tragic,” “what a shame,” “that’s so sad.” But my initial reaction was shock. Shock, that a national museum spoke openly about the country’s colonial past with both regret and understanding. Later that day I wept. I wept for my ancestors and distant relatives who were enslaved quite possibly here in Colombia. I wept for the indigenous people who shared the same pain and sorrow that comes with this burden. I wept because I had never known a place like this, a place that apologises for the traumas my ancestors bequeathed me. I wept because, back ‘home’ in London, our prime minister freely called people who looked like me piccaninnies with watermelon smiles, Muslim women, letterboxes and gay men, bum-boys. I wept because at ‘home’ we were taught to look down on a country like this. I remembered the mortified face of people when I told them I was heading to Colombia. I wept because, in that moment, I didn’t have to second guess anything, I was free of the anxiety that comes with being a black face in a white space. I wept because I did not feel like a visitor in this foreign land…I felt at home. We spent a good portion of our final week in Cartagena. We were so excited to be somewhere predominantly black for the very first time, somewhere full of history… our history! I’d never seen anything like it. Everywhere we looked, we saw faces like ours. When we walked down the street people would point at their arms and say “my colour” as a term of endearment and solidarity. We were determined to visit Palenque, the land of freed slaves, but unfortunately, time and money did not allow. Thankfully we were not disappointed; we met a beautiful palenquera named Maria. The sun danced across the folds of her skin. It glowed with a richness I can only imagine comes from living in a world that sees you. On our last day, we joined her and her friends in the town square. We danced. Their colourful dresses flew in the wind and their smiles glistened in the sunlight. They embraced us “family!” they all sang in unison. It didn’t matter who we were, where we were from or how we got there. We were home.