Colombia- A country so far away from Sweden with 33,5 million inhabitants compared to 9 million inhabitants in Sweden. A country with a totally different culture and Spanish as its main language. This is the country there me and my brother comes from and this is the country we finally visited after 16 years living in Sweden.

Non of us know who our parent are so we didn’t go back because of that because we have our family here in Sweden.
I was really nervous and even if my parent had told me that we were going to experience both sad and happy situations, it was difficult to realise that we were going back to my home country.
We started the journey 40 kilometres from us and fly with a 45 minutes flight to our capital Stockholm. We stayed there one night and after that we flew to Germany and to San Jose and after that we arrived to Bogota, the capital of Colombia. After 2 hours we understood that our suitcases were still in Germany. We stayed over in a hotel called Hallifax and next day we fly to Cali, the city where me and my brother come from. We stayed one and a half week on a hotel called Stein. Which was a lovely hotel with lots of adoptive parents from Germany, Sweden, Norway, USA, and other countries.

Our first visit
After some days the suitcases finally came to Cali. Me and my mother visited a poor place called Agua Blanca a few kilometres from Cali. We didn’t go there on our own because it’s to dangerous to be there alone. It was a group of 10 people. The first place we visited was a school with children, 6-17 years old. They made everything the needed on the school and they were very proud that they have the previlegium to go to school. After that we visit a day nursery with lots of children. The children was from a few months old to 6 years old and after that they started school. We talked with the children and they seemed to like the place and they talked to us on their language, Spanish.
When we had been there for a while we saw that about 50-60 children formed a queue and started to sing the Colombian national song. It was so sweet and the children wanted to thank Sweden because of the contribution from SIDA. SIDA is a organisation here in Sweden and they help other countries with money.

Young mothers
After this we spent some time at a maternity home for girls from 13 to 18 years old. When we came a girl in the age of 14 years old two weeks earlier had delivered a little baby girl. That girl is the same age as my brother. That’s really scary because a 14 year old girl can’t take care of a little baby. And they have no supports from the family and the boy just live them.
Lots of the girls don’t know how to take care of their children and they don’t have a place were they can live. They also think that adoption is illegal and the only thing they know is to leave the baby on the street. The maternity home helps these girls to delivered the baby and then teach them how to take care of the child. They also try to found an apartment and a job for the mother. If the girl doesn’t want to have the baby, then they can leave it to adoption. When we came they started to ask me and an other adopted girl about adoption and how we felt about this question. We told them how we felt and that they don’t have to be sorry because they can’t take care of their children. It’s better with a name to a mother if the child would like to contacted the mother.
We left the place with lots of inspiration and wanted to help the organisation.

Ciquitines and Casita de Belen
Our next visit was at an orphanage, my orphanage Chiquitines. They are supported by money from organisation and private people and it’s a quit poor place. When we came they had chicken pocks and a lot’s of children were on an other place. Outside every gate it was a gatekeeper and also outside every orphanage. We also visited my brothers orphanage Casita de Belen witch is government-owned and that’s also a school and a cathedral, and once a month a priest came and have confirmation classes. Chiquitines and Casita de Belen have about 60 children in different ages. Some children come straight from the hospital after they are born and other children are 5-10 years. When they are over 10, they are to old to be adopted and their new home is out on the street. It’s sounds terrible but it’s the reality.
Every day we saw many lonely children, old people and dogs walking around the streets begging for money and food.

Rich or poor
There is no justice in Colombia. If you are rich you are really rich and have lots of money and just a few kilometres from your house you can find a really poor area.

We were invited to a county club. It was a lot of rich people there and they could eat and drink, swim, play tennis and billiard and do many other sports. I think it was a quit boring place. It was the same thing for the club members every Sunday, they always visited the country club.
A kilometre from the country club there was a market for poor people, they danced and laughed and I could tell from the car window that they had fun together. That means that you don’t have to be rich to be happy.
A lot of people don’t have a job and they survive by selling on the street. Things like, footballs, puppies, cosmetics, clocks and other things. It’s illegal and when we visited the capital of Colombia; Bogotá, the police made razzias and arrested people. They had to be in jail for two days and the police took away all their things.
This is the reality in the country where me and my brother were born.
With lots of mixed emotions we left Colombia and flew home to Sweden. This journey was so special in many ways- the journey of my life!


© 2000 Freeway
Writers: Vanessa Hörnblad (sp02-40@park.se)
HTML by: Kristoffer Wiklund (nv03-26@park.se).