Where and how I met the participants
I started with two trial runs in Liverpool in February 2019, Ehsan and Sonia y Tony. Ehsan is a friend of mine and I met Tony through a music project. These conversations were preparation for what came next: from March that year I spent two months in Mexico followed by three in Colombia. I got in touch with local grass roots organisations and country offices of larger Non Governmental Organisations (NGO) and slowly started to get a grasp of how I could meet people who could take part in HOME.
It was generally easiest to connect with participants through existing organisations who help people in need within the migrant population. The association with them gave me some initial credibility. I looked up local branches of large global NGOs like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the Colombian Red Cross all of which were very generous in terms of sharing general knowledge of the local situations, trends and figures of migration in their respective countries but mostly fell short in practically helping to find people to interview (except the ACNUR (UNHCR) office in Apartadó who put me in touch with José Luis from ASO URAVENCOL). I also contacted local grass roots organisations that work with people who are in forced migration. It’s important to note that the vast majority of grass roots organisations that help people in need in both Mexico and Colombia are affiliated to a church. The ones I dealt with were very approachable. Being grass roots led, they had plenty of local contacts and inside knowledge. They all invited me in and shared their spaces, contacts, knowledge and often food with me. It has to be said that within these religious organisations I noted one big distinction - on one hand there are missionary ones, where you get help in exchange for participating in religious acts, a strategy I deeply disagree with and tried to avoid (although once I noticed too late), and on the other hand there are churches and its members who simply help people out of pure selflessness (or faith) with seemingly no religious strings attached. Finally, I found that the best way of getting to know future participants was starting with one person, gaining their trust and interest in the project and then letting them share their experience with people they knew. I’d say that the majority of participants were met through others.
Locations in Mexico
In Mexico I visited three different shelters for migrants. None of them had any requirements to participate in religious activities in order to earn support. The shelters give three types of support:
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Short term: People who are passing through can stay no more than three nights. They can wash their clothes, get a hot meal and a few good/safe nights sleep.
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Medium term: People waiting for administrative and immigration procedures are allowed to stay up to two weeks, time to find work and accommodation to settle or move elsewhere in the country.
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Long term: People who were passing through but ended up staying and getting involved at the shelter with either none or only long term plans to move on.
Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca
In Oaxaca I knocked on the door of the Centro de Orientación al Migrante de Oaxaca A.C. (COMI), a migrant shelter. I volunteered there for almost six weeks helping with the registration process, assisting with general daily tasks and helped picking up food from donors in the market once a week (see my photo blog post about this Charoleando). In exchange, after and before my shifts, I could use their space to talk to and record participants I had met in the shelter. I was also given the opportunity to organise a one-day workshop with the residents where we talked about food: we exchanged stories, recipes and memories. That day ended with some of the Honduran residents teaching us to make baleadas (see outcomes) which were then eaten by everybody in the shelter. Read more about it in my blog post on the COMI website. You can see more pictures of the cooking of the baleadas on my blog.
Standing in the main court yard in COMI
Taking Carlos Geovany's picture in the library at Hermanos en el Camino in Ixtepec
Ixtepec, Oaxaca
The migrant shelter Hermanos en el Camino in Ixtepec is famous for having been founded by an important ambassador of migrants’ rights in Mexico, a Catholic priest and a human rights champion, Padre Alejandro Solalinde. It’s built right by the tracks of the Pan-American freight railway where many undocumented people jump on and off the freight train called “the Beast” on the their extremely dangerous journey from the South to the North. The shelter's manager let me and my partner stay for three days to talk to whomever I wanted. It’s a large space with several buildings and big outdoor areas. They keep chickens, have a library and a small health centre. The participants I met there were mainly people who had been in Hermanos en el Camino for a while, were used to interacting with international volunteers and who were more settled than others who were preparing to jump back on the train the next day. The shelter is a very important place for anyone who travels on this route.
Ciudad de Mexico
Hermanos en el Camino have a sister shelter in the capital. It’s situated right next to the Guadalupe Basilica in the north of the city which is an important place of worship and pilgrimage. It’s a much smaller shelter, comprised of a simple house with five very simple bed rooms and a kitchen. I spent a day there talking to most of the people who were currently staying there.
Locations in Colombia
Santa Marta, Magdalena
In Santa Marta I knocked on the door of what seemed to be the main soup kitchen of the city, situated in a church where they serve over 400 hot meals every lunch during the week. The team let me participate in a lunch and talk to people about my project. Once involved in meeting people and talking to the organisers I realised that the organisation was one of the missionary groups where in exchange for a meal you had to pray with them and listen to a short sermon - something I wholeheartedly disagree with. But it’s a complicated issue: their method is problematic, but their work is essential. The soup kitchen started as a service for people in need living on the streets. With the explosion of Venezuelan immigrants the majority of service users are now people who have recently crossed the border. Many of them told me they might have struggled to survive the first months were it not for the soup kitchen. The atmosphere at the place was loaded. Big crowds and a lot of distrusting inquisitive looks towards each other, but also towards me. This made me feel uncomfortable but not as much as my impression that the organisers had a preconceived idea of the attendees , labelling them with generalised and sometimes degrading terms. I didn’t have time to properly sit down with anyone or take time to explain what I was doing in detail so the interviews are much shorter and get straight to the point. I met up with Yaya, whom I’d met at the kitchen later in the day and she introduced me to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ nephew, Ruben.
Minca, Magdalena
I met Wilians at the local barber shop where he is employed as a stylist. I had a beer with him in the bar next to the barber after his shift.
Riohacha, La Guajira
I met Enrique who runs a local community theatre company (Teatro Jayeechi) through my dad. He knows a lot of the street vendors along the water front. Most of them are from the Wayuu people, native to the region. Now there are also many Venezuelan refugees who share the waterfront with them selling all sorts. I got introduced to Mirleny, a Venezuelan vendor who's stall is a bit of a social meeting point for her friends and family. All the participants in Riohacha are either nearby vendors or their friends/family.
Taking Carlos' picture in Riohacha which didn't come out.
Cartagena, Bolívar
Getting a bit more used to the Venezuelan accent and the parallels in Venezuelan people’s stories it became easier to approach individuals when getting into a random conversation on the street. José was our go-to beer vendor on the square by our hostel who I’d been chatting to for a few days. I eventually mentioned my project and we sat down in my hostel to record our chat. Then I met a woman called Daylester in a salsa bar on a night out. It turned out she was heavily involved in helping newly arrived young Venezuelan women get a foot hold in the city. That’s how I met Dorangelys. We met and chatted in a mall in the city centre.
Bello, Antioquia
Medellín is being a big city has a more visible online presence of organisations which help Venezuelans (Bello is on the outskirts of Medellín). Most of them are backed by a church and operate in a way where Venezuelans who’ve been in the country longer and are more settled will look for new arrivals and support them in their needs. Through them I got to a church in Bello where I was introduced to Patricia, Yuliana and Luís during a local community party outside the church where it was difficult to find a quiet space.
Apartadó, Antioquia
In Apartadó I got put in touch with José-Luís through a contact at the local base of the UNHCR. José-Luís runs another organisation of Venezuelans helping Venezuelans. He’s been in Colombia for a few years and is very involved in his project. We met one morning in a park where I told him about the project and then a few days later I invited him to my hotel and he brought Dinajac and Marlyn who both work within his project ASO URAVENCOL.
Bogotá DC
In Bogotá I got in touch with the Fundación Atención Al Migrante, the charitable arm of the diocese of Bogotá, through a friend who works for the NGO Caritas. Their set up is more like my experience of the Mexican shelters. The house is next to the bus station and most people are fresh off the bus. They stay a short time (sometimes not even over night) on their way mostly to another place in Colombia but sometimes also southwards into Ecuador (and then Peru). Unfortunately my camera stopped working after the first interview and I didn’t conduct any more conversations after i spoke to Estefany y Rodolfo.
Envigado, Antioquia
Only one interview was recorded in Envigado. I’ve known Colette since I was a little child, she was my grand mother’s neighbour in Envigado. My family has since moved away, but every time I go to Colombia I visit her. She is my connection to Judaism in Colombia and if my visit falls on a Jewish holiday I’ll go and spend it with her since my Colombian family isn’t Jewish. She had told me bits of her story before. It’s a fascinating tale of how her family fled Nazi occupation in France and ended up in Colombia after being trapped on a ship for over a year. Her home most definitely is Colombia and Envigado. She’s been here almost 80 years. Nevertheless we talked about memories in food and music, keeping traditions alive and how she felt when she smelt pain au chocolat for the first time returning to Paris after 50 years. I recorded her in her front garden.
Urabá (Necoclí, Antioquia and Capurganá, Chocó)
I only started to find out about this region’s involvement in international migration whilst in Colombia and did some quick intense research. We took off in a tiny plane from Medellín to Apartadó, the administrative centre of the region. Progressing with my project there was very time consuming and difficult. People I approached were a lot more distrusting, didn’t necessarily speak Spanish or English and were all subject to the tight grips of the local paramilitary who are smuggling them. They were also in a real rush as they rarely stop in that area. The general situation in the area made it difficult to dig and get to talk to the right people without putting myself, the participants or the coyotes (people traffickers) at risk (they were the ones most wary and the ones most under the grip of the local armed groups). By the time I had set up a bit of a network of people to talk to, through a local pastor and a local community leader, it was time to leave. But some important ground work was done and I’m hoping to go back to continue the project, with more funding and time. Nevertheless I brought back two short testimonies: Kwame a Ghanian man who’d been living and working in Brazil (there was a wave of African workers going to Brazil for the constructions preparing for the Olympics 2016 and the World Cup 2014. Work that now has dried up and a lot of people like Kwame are now looking for a brighter future “North”). I also talked to Ramon from Dominican Republic. He is trying to find work in Panama in the hopes of giving his daughter back home the life she deserves.
Taking Ramon's picture in the lush and dangerous Darién jungle.
All photos on this page by Anna Johnston