The Open Journal: "Tight time"

Third day

My new room

It is 23:00 and I am tired and a little bit dizzy.  All around the New College Residence are posters saying “Prevent seasons’ diseases”, and I think I am just felling flu syntomps.  First night, there was not heating in Tartu Residence and I was almost dying because of the cold, I even had to wear four of my dresses to get, just a very little, warm.  Anyway, I will survive the extremely Canadian cold weather here.  The good very good thing is my new room.

Despite the discomfort of illness announced, I am motivated to continue with this journal exercise.  Specially because I am trying to do it in my “best” English.

Regarding today, we started with an extraordinary yoga session during the morning.  We were breathing and exhaling, with all the participants of the WHRI, for about one hour.  Angela Lyte, Angelita as Alda calls her, who is the executive director of the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute, was our yoga instructor and she did it just fantastic.  For me this time just “to honor myself”, was very, very strong and it makes me thought about all the time we never ever have for just be confidence with our body’s and minds, and life itself.  As indigenous woman who is fighting for rights, I always think I have not time for this, but I also think:  how I am going to practice yoga if it does not match with my customs and traditions?.  It makes me also think about the indigenous women, those that are living there, in the community, those indigenous women who don’t have this chance, those indigenous women who never will have the possibility for just be sitting, not even doing yoga, but those indigenous women who will probably not have the option just to think about themselves.   Probably some of the most traditional indigenous women will say that we indigenous women do take care of ourselves in other ways, and some indigenous men will say that we don’t need those practices that are coming from alijuna (non wayuu) women.  And probably some are right and I am wrong, and also can be the opposite so I could be right but what I have seen is that, indigenous women who are more engage in struggles for defending rights, are also more vulnerable in the most intimate spheres, precisely, because we are always in the middle of something, and those some things, can be the continuous activities which leads us to being traveling around some times, and also leads us to be in the middle of two words and two worlds and also two ways of thinking or lifestyles or lifehoods.   When I opened my eyes, I could not stop crying, because this reality, the reality of indigenous women who are in the middle of something, protecting the wear, that we tacitly apply, in the name of the conservation and survival.  Nobody wants to talk about what happened inside, but there are things we have to speak out.

Discussions with Alda, were also about matters where you have to breath and exhale, only to understand that we women, no matter whether you are from here or you are from there, there is a history of courage women, those that had a dreams of changing the future for next generations.

Why tight time?  Well, I have to finish an article about wind energy in Colombia, and I also have to finish some reports, so I leave this here just for today.    

May 4

23:28

Toronto Canada