UF in Colombia Day 5: Medellín, Mondongo & Many Meetings

Thursday 10th of May was our first day in Medellín! Waking up do a sunny day we thanked the weather gods for another type of weather, weather that we associated more with South America than the rain Bogotá had given us. Starting off the day we had a meeting at ARN, the agency for reincorperation of former combatants, which has worked both with paramilitares (right-wing self defense groups) and leftist guerillas. There we met the amazing Daniel Cano, whom we quickly found out was a former master student of Uppsala. We asked ourselves: does everyone we meet in Colombia have a connection to Sweden?? However, Daniel did a great job explaining the work of the ARN, and the differences between the paramilitary reintegration process and the reincorperation process of FARC – the latter being more complicated as it’s supposed to happen collectively. He also told us a bit about his own experience, being kidnapped by FARC in is youth. However shocking it might be for a naive swede, it is not a very unusual colombian experience. In a country with more than 8 million victims almost everyone have had some kind of experience of the violence, either though themselves or a relative. For example, one of our taxidrivers happened to tell some of us about his seven years in the ELN guerilla and later service in the national army. With the conflict having affected so many the big questions seems to be – How does one forgive? How does one move on?