It was our 2-year anniversary as a couple. Officially, at least. In reality, our relationship had begun 4 years back, in 2013, on my first trip to Colombia. An eventful 2 weeks, where I accompanied my brother on a trip visiting his friend, who was completing an exchange semester at the best private university of Colombia. When pitching the idea for the trip to me, he said it could be nice to “expand my horizon”. In retrospect, that was a ridiculous understatement. Beyond one of the most intense, beautiful, frightening and eye-opening travel experiences of my life, it put me on a path of 11 years (to date) following one of my greatest passions (or obsessions?) in life: Travelling and living in the amazing country of Colombia. A topic that is undoubtedly worthy of several stories to tell here in the months and years ahead.
For our anniversary, Kathe had prepared a little surprise for me. This was inspired by discussions we had been having around a particular Spanish word; the term indigente. This is a term, used in variations all across Latin America, to refer to people living in conditions of extreme poverty. As someone who was learning Spanish at the time, the term sounded strange to me. It was curiously close to the word indígena (a term used to refer to people of indigenous decent) and reverse engineering my approach to speak Spanish by pronouncing English words in a Spanish way, it sounded very close to indecent. Those misconceptions were later clarified, but some of the connotations this term carried were not too far off from the impression my reasoning by analogy had given me.
“Eso es un indigente” (Eng. that is an indigente), people would explain to me, pointing out a person in rags, unkempt and carrying a dirty bundle of blankets through the center of Bogotá. There was something that felt inherently wrong about assigning this kind of label to a person in dire circumstances. Reducing the existing of the person to their (pitiful) condition. Labelling or categorizing them for circumstances that should be temporary, or better yet, not exist at all. When does one become an indigente? And what does it mean, to be one?
“Cuidado con el indigente allá” (Eng. be careful with the indigente over there). A phrase you might here, being guided by a local around a Latin American mega city like Bogotá, and a sign of the stigma that comes along with it. Drug use, an unwillingness to work, criminality and even a pre-disposition to use violence, are some of the implications that come along with it. This, of course, is not limited to Latin America. Referring to someone as homeless, might carry similar connotations in English speaking societies.
As someone who has worked with organizations supporting refugees, the sole act of reducing a person to a label, which, at best, describes a (hopefully) temporary condition, was perhaps something I took issue with as well. Such terms, although convenient and in most cases not used with a bad intention in mind, create distance. They create an “us” versus “them” mindset. They also dehumanize the affected person, making it easier to ignore their individual struggle and needs.
Regardless of the origins and connotations of this term, our numerous discussions had made it clear to Kathe that the conditions of the people referred to by this was something I cared about. And she did, too. So for anniversary, after having some delicious food at a nice restaurant in Chapinero, we went back to the center of Bogotá. Kathe had prepared two paper lunch bags, filled with some food and personal hygiene items. The plan was to give them to people in need, who we would encounter on the street. The latter hardly took more than a few minutes.
The first one was a common feature in the concrete jungle of Colombian cities, a young man pulling a wooden hand trolley filled with garbage, intended to see for a few centavos to a recycling operation. When we approached him, he was a bit surprised, even startled. As Kathe asked him how he was doing and what his name was, you could see the question mark on his face: “why are these people talking to me? what do they want?”. Matteo was just 18 years old and had been living from recycling trash for a couple years now. His face and hands were dirty from trash he was handling without gloves and soot and grime of the city streets. His clothes were torn and hanging off his body, which didn’t seem to get much in the form of regular and balanced nutrition.
As we continued our conversation, he relaxed a bit, and even seemed to enjoy the attention he was getting. As we offered him our little gift, his sunken eyes light up, and as Kathe was explaining the contents and that she hoped they would be useful to him, he kept expressing his gratitude, saying thanks at least 5 times. The second person we encountered, again just a few minutes after saying goodbye to Matteo, was an elderly woman. She was struggling along the street with a walking stick, on the way to the gas station to buy petrol for her gasoline stove, wielding a few small bills and a collection of coins in her hand. Now it was my turn. In my, at that point still shaky Spanish, I approached her, asking her how she was doing and her name. Offering our gift to her, she received it thankfully, telling us how she was struggling to pay for her utility bills and any help was “godsent”.
Besides being an incredibly thoughtful and original gift, it was also one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Helping someone who is struggling, giving them a little hope and putting a smile on their face is the most pure and rewarding feelings I know. Ever since, the memory of this day had stuck in my mind, bubbling up at times, creating an urge to do more of the like.
After returning to Germany and while finishing my studies, I was working my network, researching job portals, looking for job opportunities in Colombia. I reached out 2nd connections of people I barely knew, putting great effort into my pitches and even considering some business ventures of my own. But I also knew, I knew close to nothing, had very limited working experience and the opportunities, even for Colombians, to find a decently paid job with growth opportunities was extremely hard. Starting a management trainee program at a large multi-national corporation, I focused on my career for two years, building experience in the area of business process automation and efficiency, which took me to an even larger logistics corporation, doing this kind of work at scale, learning more and climbing in the corporate ladder.
But as I assumed the first leadership roles, I struggled to embody a culture with which I couldn’t fully identify myself with. Appeasing narcistic managers focusing on self-promotion and preserving the power of their little mandates and putting in overtime to automate routine tasks in the accounting departments of a logistics giant were good professional learnings, but they lacked the purpose I was looking for and volunteering for a couple of hours a week on the side wasn’t enough to compensate.
I was ready to do something more aligned with my personal values, something with a purpose that was close to my heart, even if that meant sacrificing some of the privileges of an office worker in an economy with high salaries. Re-engaging another idea I had been playing with for a long time, and that gained new relevance in the time when the Russian invasion of Ukraine was just starting, I went back to browsing the volunteer openings page of the Peace Corps. And sure enough, there was a position for a professional with 5+ years of work experience in Economic Community Development in rural Colombia.
The application just flowed into the keyboard, as if I had been preparing it for years. Putting together the documents, references and dealing with a clumsy application form didn’t hold me back for more than a day. I re-read it, and it looked great. It was coming straight from the heart. Months went by without feedback, and I had started looking into other options. The friend of my brother who we were visiting in Colombia had started his own company, with a name inspired by one of the departments Colombia and a mission to preserve it’s bio-diversity by waste across the food supply chain. Initial chats with their Global Operations team resulted in a fit between their needs and the skills I had acquired in my corporate adventures. The stated mission goal was a purpose I was passionate about and the culture I perceived was a fresh breeze from previous companies.
Just a week after signing with Choco, I got invited to an interview with the Peace Corps. It was on the day I was moving out of my apartment in Cologne, in route to my new home in Berlin. I thought: why not? As moves go, things were a bit delayed, the friend who’d promised to help didn’t come through and I had just packed all of my belongings into Mini Cooper rented via Carsharing, when it was time for the interview. Thank god for background effects. Dehydrated, sweating and with a stiff neck, I nailed the interview. And three days later, while hiking the Lycian way in Antalya with two of my best friends from Uni, I got the offer.
I remember intense deliberations while hiking up rocky mountain passes and sitting by the camp fire, discussing the decision with my friends. I knew where my heart was. There was no doubt. But rationally, I also knew that joining the scale up was a more unique opportunity, and would potentially qualify me even better to do something along the lines of economic development in Colombia in a year or two. And so it went, two of the most intense years of my life later, having automated the shit out of the company’s struggling back-office operations and elevating the problem child of their operations to the highest performing team, I was sitting with my best friend from childhood. I had told him how the financials of the company were not great and that there were huge lay-offs ahead. He asked me what I would do, if I were to be affected. Without much thinking, I told him I would book a one-way flight to Colombia and start some projects of my own.
Two weeks later, as I found out that my role was indeed being scrapped (now that most of the work was automated anyways), I drove home, booked my flight, gave the notice to my landlord, and drafted the basic approach for Dígente: Scaling what I had did with Kathe 7 years earlier to a regular occurrence and using some of the amateur writing & design skills I’d learned organizing a weekly ritual of sharing tortilla (the Spanish kind) and designating a member of the office Ms. or Mr. Tortilla, with a short and emotional profile, to create engagement.
While selling my belongings, saying goodbyes to my friends in Barcelona and pursuing a few applications for remote jobs, I added more flesh to the concept, collected a bunch of feedback from friends and acquaintances and applied another learning from my scale up time: Executing the idea within the first week in Medellín.
And this is where the story ends, for now. Let’s see where it goes. Either way, I feels great to make this vision a reality and I’m immensely grateful to anyone who takes the time to look at the project and share some feedback.
Thanks for reading!!