Friends
Happy Anniversary! Or more aptly, Sad Anniversary!
Sad because a year ago today, on 31 July 2009, OM8 closed in Rionegro, Colombia. I have been silent since then, but my remembering this day shows how deeply OM8 has been etched in me.
It was a vibrant conference, and I can still visualize many of the presentations. However, I am sorry to say - though I suspect Amparo, Clemencia, Jeanine and our other indefatigable hosts will be gladdened – that it paled against Colombia and the Colombians. Or the little-little I experienced of it.
I loved the way the Colombians live with/among their art - live their art, make their lives an art, whatever. That first pre-conference Sunday sitting at the plaza, watching children clambering up and down the world-class sculptures of Fernando Botero, was pure magic. Then walking in the Metro to find ... huge blow-ups of Colombian poets and their poetry - wow! Going up in the cable car to the “slums” to find, planted soaringly on a hill: a library. (I am trying to keep “name-calling” to a minimum, but my two partners-in-adventure that Sunday will know who they are.) Throughout, I thought: I want to work with others – like some of the eminent artists who shaped and enriched OM7 – to make more of this happen in Ghana.
The discourse.... On Day 3 we broke up into excursion groups. The group I joined travelled past Pablo Escobar country on the “historic or memory route”. At the end of it, about an hour outside Medellin, we arrived at our destination, Granada. Reduced to rubble twice by warring groups. Who would have expected that even way out there, we would be met by a group of young people quoting, spontaneously and mellifluously, Jesus Martin Barbero and other Colombian communication intellectuals? This was a conference, refreshingly, of the youths: by night, they danced like dervishes (whew!) and by day they eloquently argued their praxis. I thought: how can our own illustrious Ghanaian intellectuals imprint themselves so dramatically on our youths?
At the end of the conference I had the privilege of spending a couple of days in Bogota and more, of being taken into the warmth of the family and friends of Kike (kee-keh) Hurtado, Amparo's lead youth side-kick [side-kike J] in organizing OM8. It felt like home.
So many memories…. What a privilege it was to be there – and how much I lamented that so few of us from OM7 could make it. There were only two of us from Africa. What can we do to build more bridges across our continents?
Before we left the conference, we were given bags from the Ministry of Tourism which read: “The only risk is wanting to stay.” I heard the horror stories, but never, not even once, felt at risk in Colombia - other than wanting, very much, to stay. And even more, to return with family.
Colombianas y Colombianos gentiles: Muchissimas gracias. Espero, hasta pronto!
Wilna