This post is also available in: Spanish
Wendy Vado is the Connecting Peoples Coordinator with MCC Nicaragua/Costa Rica.
A few days ago I traveled to Colombia for a regional orientation for new MCC workers. I confess that I was not exactly excited to travel to Colombia, even though I usually love to travel and see new places. Maybe it was because since it has always been difficult for me, a Nicaraguan, to obtain a visa for that country, but, as a lover of Gabo (Gabriel García Márquez), I was carried away with curiosity to visit his country. For me it was a luxury that until that moment I had only discovered in his novels.
My instincts were right. In the immigration line to enter the country, the immigration officials were quite apprehensive when they learned that I was Nicaraguan. Nevertheless, we had no further problems. In fact, in Colombia people know more about Nicaragua than we know about Colombia. When you travel you don’t go alone, but rather the conflicts and international litigation that your country has with others go with you. To my surprise, Nicaragua has several.
Obviously my accent sounded out of the ordinary. Especially right now, when Colombia has a substantial group of migrants arriving from Venezuela. And even though people know a lot about Nicaragua, few Nicaraguans live or travel there, at least I realized as much as we toured Bogotá’s street graffiti and one of the guides, upon hearing me, said with surprise: “what a cool accent, I’ve never heard one like that,” and, always very proud of my identity, I replied, “of course, I’m Nicaraguan” … “Wow! Nicaraguan! I’ve never met a Nicaraguan,” she responded.
You’ll imagine that up until this point I was like a peacock, right up until my admirer dumped a bucket of cold water on me: you talk just like the lemur king in Madagascar, the one that sings “I like to move it, move it!” Although I felt a bit offended by the comparison, I burst out laughing and praised her wit.
Street graffiti in Bogotá. Photo: Wendy Vado
It didn’t take long for me to realize that apart from appearances, infrastructure, dialects and accents, Colombia and Nicaragua share more than it seems and than international litigation wants to recognize. Both countries are currently living through moments of tension, fear, and pain provoked by the violence tearing them both apart. That same week a car bomb exploded, killing 20 people in the police academy right in Bogotá. It was even clearer to me when Colombian women opened their hearts to show the anguish, grief, and pain that they felt in that moment, very like that which Nicaraguans feel now… And in the midst of this, we realize that this pain and clamor for peace is not exclusive to our countries, but is experienced in our whole American region. Could it be that we are living through an era in which violence, hate, wars, and excessive nationalist have triumphed?
To me, not yet, no, because I remember that in the church where we congregated during my time there, a sister was requesting prayers for a Venezuelan sister who had recently arrived to Colombia. Pregnant, she needed a place to stay and the sister asked the church to support her. This brought me to think of the condition of a pregnant, migrant woman. How could I not grieve at this? My heart overflowed even more in the moment of sharing thanks in worship, when a young woman who had served with MCC in Nicaragua stood up in the middle of the congregation and told them how we Nicaraguans had welcomed her when she was in our country, above all in the crisis moments of violence; this made her feel Nicaraguan and she told me that this too was my country. Up until that moment, I honestly had not felt that way. But those words not only echoed in my heart for their warmth but also because of the great truth that they showed me: Only when you are a foreigner in another country do you realize the importance of hospitality. In that moment I cried and prayed that all of the people who have had to leave their homes and leave the world they know behind will find people who will encourage them this way.
Diana Martinez of Colombia, YAMENer 2018 in Nicaragua, and Wendy Vado Connecting Peoples Coordinator for MCC Nicaragua/Costa Rica. Photo: Wendy Vado.
Maybe our nations’ governments and structural problems will take years to fix, but the sure thing is that in when we find community spaces where we accompany one another and come to see ourselves as human beings with shared humanity, there will always be hope.