World Refugee Day

Today is World Refugee Day.

Please help us bring awareness to this issues. Click here for more information.

Thesis

My Senior Honors Thesis entitled Challenging Subaltern Identities: The Collective Construction of Citizenship Among Internally Displaced Persons in Medellín, Colombia, which was submitted to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley can be found here.

The Return

One year ago today I had already started my research in Medellin, and had been into it for about a month. In the months that followed many things happened, but two are particularly important. First, I graduated, and can officially call myself an anthropologist. And second, just as important or perhaps even more so, I was accepted at Oxford University to complete a MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the Department of International Development in Queen Elizabeth House. I still can't believe that in just a few months I will be at Oxford, a school with such incredible history. I applied there, not because I thought I would get in (I didn't), but because the program was too perfect to pass up. I talked to one of my professors at Berkeley and told him my plans to apply to Oxford and my apprehension and insecurities. He said "let them tell you no, don't say no to yourself." Thus, thanks to Professor Charles Briggs, I will go to Oxford in September to start the program.

I am currently back in Medellín for the summer. I just arrived a week ago, and I intend to continue working with the persons I worked with last year, and to follow up on my research. After I left Medellín many changes were made to the system of assistance to the displaced. Therefore I feel obligated to make sure I understand the changes that happened since I left, in order to update my thesis.

I will try to keep updating the blog as I continue learning about internal displacement in Medellín. Thank you for reading!

The Last Week of Fieldwork

Well, my 3 months of fieldwork in Medellin will come to an end next Wednesday, as I leave for Berkeley on Thursday. During this time I have learned a great deal about internal displacement in Medellin, I have shared some of that knowledge with you through this blog.

The next step for me now is get back to Cal and write my thesis, finish with the classes I have left and graduate in May of next year. I have some graduate school programs in mind, all of them in Europe, and I will start applying in December/January.

I would like to thank you for reading about this journey of mine, in which I learned so many things not only about issues in internal displacement but also about myself.

Ursula

World Humanitarian Day

Celebrate World Humanitarian Day on August 19th
For more check out
http://ochaonline.un.org/News/WorldHumanitarianDay/tabid/5677/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Quimbaya Wordle

Click on the image to see its larger version.

This is a wordle on all the text I have written to date on this blog. Wordle is an online software that creates an image based on the data you entered. The larger words are the ones that are used more often, and the smaller the ones that are used less often. I thought this would be a very interesting exercise.

A Remarkable Couple

Today I conducted an interview with a couple who had caught my attention at last week's march. They held a sign and walked slowly through the streets on their boots, brown from the dry mud. Their faces were clear in my mind during the following days. The day before yesterday I saw them again. This time I approached them and introduced myself. We got to talking and that is how I found out that they have been displaced for 8 years, yet they received the first government "emergency" aid just 8 months ago. They lost their 4 children to government family services and are not allowed to see them. They cannot find work because the man is 50 and the woman is not much younger. At first they were too embbarassed to tell me that how they survive is by begging at the stop lights in the wealthier neighborhoods of the city. They agreed to meet with me the following day (yesterday) but unfortunately I waited for 1.5 hours before leaving. I thought that something must have come up, but was sad I did not get the chance to talk more with them.

Today, I was driving running errands for my father when I saw them at a stop light just a few blocks from where I live. They were on the other side of the road and traffic did not allow me to stop, so I hoped that they would still be there when I drove back. Lucky for me they were. I asked them if they had breakfast, they said no. They spent last night under a bridge because they had not made enough money the day before to pay the bus fare back to their settlement. I offered them to pick them up in 15 minutes and treat them to breakfast. They accepted.

We got to talking and it was heart-braking to hear their story of struggle for the past 8 years. One of the worse things was to hear what people say to them when they are begging, in the best case they call them lazy, in the worst they threaten to kill them if they see them begging there again. Unfortunately, poverty is a crime here and in every other place.

I had printed a picture I took of them during the march, and they were happy when I gave it to them. The woman looked at it for a long time, and pointing to the sign they were holding in the image she asked 'what does this print say again?' It was an eye opener to realize they did not even know what the sign they held for 3 hours said.

They were peasants, they did not have much money to begin with before being displaced, but at least, like the man told me, they had fruit trees, streams and rivers in which to fish, they cultivated the land and never had to worry about not having food on their plates, although they could not afford much else. Now, they are in the city, a concrete jungle (it is, even though it sounds like a cliche), where you have to pay for everything.

Both are convinced that there is power in numbers since they received their first government aid thanks to the help of the leader of the organization of displaced population they joined about a year ago. They hope that the marches and take overs they have done will make their struggles visible. When I asked them what gave them hope to go on, they said 'the help of the government.' Let's just hope that help doesn't come too little too late.