START: OPTION COLOMBIA IN UNIVALLE
October 1994. They appeared in Univalle signs, grafitti and even a mural. All them referred to "Option Colombia". Then a note in the t.v. news about the same thing. It only said that it was a possibility of going to small and remote towns, to teach and to test the knowledge acquired in the university. Then, posters appeared with the title "the Option Colombia practice"; they invited to attend a meeting in which they would explain the program content with more precision.
I attended as I could, the same as people of different faculties. It was explained that students of several universities created the Corporation Option Colombia (COC) with the purpose of seating the achievements of the Constitution of the 91e1. The experience consisted on traveling to a remote municipality chosen by one's self and to work for six months with an agency of the state or an NGO related with each person's specialty. It was looked for to bring near the university to the small town, to the cultural diversity that is the nation, to transform the student into a «cultural amphibian» that helped the entity to communicate with the populations that have not received any benefit from the state.
The candidate to practitioner proposed a place and a work that he could carry out, and the Option crews look for a state entity or NGO that made something same or similar. It was possible, but not sure, that they found him exactly the place and the work that he had requested. If the student considered that the place and the work proposed by Option didn't interest him, he simply said no. If he wanted or he could wait, they continued looking for options until giving with the suitable one.
The idea got my attention: It was related with communication and it takes me closer to several cultural needs that I had not been able to solve. In the practice the field work, the direct contact with people was demanded, something of what had been spoken a lot in the university and that it had always been left to the student's personal criteria. I decided to propose communitarian work with indigenous in the Santa Marta Snowy Mountain Range or in the Macarena Sierra.
In a meeting, some weeks later, a partner of the COC asked me if I wanted go to work to the Guainía, with the Social Solidarity Net. None of us remembered where the department was and we had to look for a map to locate it. It was exactly in the small extreme of the eastern end, in the frontiers with Venezuela and Brazil. I asked if in that department there were indigenous. Marco Alejandro, one of the students that had instructed us about the COC, responded me that they were the population's 98.8% according to the DANEe2, and I accepted.
Why did I accept? During my carrier1, I also took subjects with different plans. I shared experiences with people from philosophy, physical education and psychology. Additionally, I saw a seminar about democracy and human rights that it was given for all the students of Univalle, with professors of diverse specialties. While I took those classes it felt one time and another the same thing: The university was centered theoretical and mentally in Europe, there was a vision of INAIA2, but the European point of view prevailed. I felt that there was a hole in my instruction, which our culture is and it has been from the beginning a mixture of the indigenous, the European and the African thing. I lacked to explore two of the three roots of INAIA that had been so little worked in the plan. To fill the hole it was necessary to look for the native in their past and in their present and this was the precise opportunity. Then I would look for to explore the African root, harder to follow in the other side of the Atlantic. This was one of the primordial reasons for those that I decided to travel.
I had to leave toward Bogotá, to receive an instruction on what was the Solidarity net in a more precise way and to leave toward Inírida, the capital of the Guainía. I liked the little bit that I knew about the net; I had only seen publicity in t.v. and one or another article in newspapers. I knew that it was the government's agency with programs for the poorest benefit. Something that should exist from the beginning of the Republic, but, as I would know later, not even in 1995 it had touched earth.
I went out with a little baggage, I traveled by land and I arrived to the National Archive building, almost besides the Nariño's Palace. With students of all parts of the country, of different specialties and idiosyncrasies, I received an "instruction-lightning", about all and each one of the programs of the net. It was data bombing, thrown all together like to the juriae3. We all felt that we lacked something. We could ask many questions, to interrogate and to interrogate, but that it is not the most used custom of the student body. There was not enough time, we didn't know what we will find really when arriving to the departments, It were shown something that was completely new and, as if it was not enough, the Colombian state is dark and complicated.
They presented us eleven programs in total, in housing, health, education and employment. I found a complete mess that of urban housing, full with laws, turns and sheaths. Nobody was prepared for that kind of instruction and nobody came out prepared of it. For those that will work with the FOSES (Fund of Emergency and Social Solidarity) they were given an additional instruction that anyway only lasted one day. Then, we distribute ourselves, each one for the land in which he will work. Some they left immediately, others in some days and, a partner and me, in 15 days.
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