Disparando Cameras

Today I tagged along with Porter on a site visit to a Colombia ONG, Disparando Cameras para la Paz. The fact that a Fulbright grantee started the organization really emphasized the feeling I've had since I got here that I'm simply not doing enough. There are probably people who are better suited to being productive in environments with no oversight, no guidance, and no requirements than I am. It's not that I don't like to work (okay, maybe that's not entirely true...) but I have a hard time pushing myself to go out and talk with the right people. I question everything, and people who question everything rarely find answers that don't simply lead to more questions.

But once the director started talking I realized, yet again, that things are not always as they seem. Sometimes people who try to do too much end up stepping on toes and reinforcing existing power structures. I know I don't want to do that - so my question remains, how to be useful in this life without being arrogant?

Tonight I successfully called someone I have only met once. It's ridiculous how much prodding I need to do such simple things - I've been meaning to call this woman for months, literally MONTHS, and haven't because I wasn't sure what to say, or what I hoped to accomplish, or what I have to offer her organization, a group of displaced Afro-Colombian women. But I did call (with some online assistance, thanks baby!) and she asked me to come to their offices next Wednesday.

Right now I should be filling out my midterm report. I've been in Colombia for six months, and haven't accomplished half of what I set out to do. My initial proposal sounds crazy to me now, ridiculously, even aggresively ambitious. I claim I'm going to write a book! When in reality it took me six months just to have the tiniest, tinniest understanding of what it means to live here, what it means to participate in anything even vaguely political, what a huge risk and brave move it is to be involved in public life in Colombia.

The director of Disparando Cameras was refreshingly committed to his organization's very specific goals: to teach kids living in really tough circumstances to take and develop photos, in a way that dignifies their experience instead of patting them on the head and giving them candy, or shoes or something needed and useful but not lasting. I want that kind of clarity: to have a vision for what I want to accomplish and the discipline not to be sidetracked by good intentions that don't serve the purpose.