Today is my final day in Colombia! I can’t believe it has gone by so fast. I feel like I just arrived yesterday and its already time to leave! It is so hard for me to watch how many people diseases affect as I treaded through the streets. Everywhere you look, there are newborn babies and toddlers that consist of only skin and bones. Children that are not even eight years of age it seems are watching over and taking care of the babies. According to UNICEF in 2007, over 170,000 Colombians were living with HIV or AIDS (3). Since then, numbers have risen and the AIDS epidemic has become more prevalent. Since there is so much poverty, sanitation issues, and not enough education about AIDS, the disease keeps spreading rapidly! This saddens me beyond belief because there is nothing I can do to make this problem go away. Yet our team is doing everything in our power to help people out, educating them about how severe AIDS is and telling them what they can do to shy away from it.
(Photo Courtesy of CERF)
Although we are in a safe area in the tiny little city, I still have moments where I feel completely unsafe. While security in Colombia has improved significantly in recent years, violence by narco-terrorist groups continues to affect some rural areas as well as large cities (1). One of the men in the group was robbed while using an automatic teller machine on the street. The man that robbed him was on a motorcycle and didn’t even see him coming. There have also been instances of robberies of tourists departing at the airport, on hiking trails, and taxi passengers (1). After the mugging, I have began to get very scared to leave our campsite, even with a bunch men!
(Photo Courtesy of CERF)
Even though there are lots of children flooding the street, a good chunk had some type of schooling. According to our tour guide, about eighty percent of children enter school (5). Of those children, around sixty percent of students complete primary schooling, which is five years and move onto secondary schooling, which is six years (5). We met a young girl named Natalia, who had joined a preschool academy until she turned six and then went to school (5). She was so cute and so proud that she got to go to school because her best friend did not. She would come back afterwards and teach her the things she learned in class that day. School goes from February to November in the main city, whereas in other cities if goes from August to June of the next year (5). Children are very well behaved during school. It looks like children in America could take some notes!
I can’t believe it is already time for me to go back to the States! I have learned so much from the culture in Colombia. I have high hopes for the society to come around and knock out poverty all together.
(1) Travel.State.Gov. Colombia. (2010)
(2) Rural Poverty Portal. Royal Poverty in Colombia. (2010)
(3) UNICEF. Colombia (2 March 2010)
(4) The Telegraph. Colombian drug cartels blamed for the destruction of rainforest. (2008)
(5) Findtarget Reference. Colombian People. (2010)
(6) Wide Horizons for Children. Humanitarian Aid In Colombia. (2010)
(7) The World Factbook. South America: Colombia. (2010)
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