The Journey
Yesterday, I met up with a stranger behind a building in San Antonio for a sleep bonnet.
For those who aren’t, or don’t share a space with, Black girls, sleep bonnets are silk or satin bonnets we wear to keep cotton pillowcases from drying out our hair. They’re not a “nice to have” — they’re mandatory, lest your hair turn into a dehydrated, mangled mess; of course, I forgot mine at home. I’ve never liked sleep bonnets anyways, so I figured I could just manage the next 6-9 months without one. It was a bad call — after a few weeks, my hair felt (and looked) like one of those scratchy stainless steel sponges that you use to clean your sink.
In the United States, sleep bonnets were available at any Walgreens or CVS I’ve ever walked into. In Colombia, it’s a little bit different. While somewhere around 25% of Colombians are Black, they’re not in Medellin (or so I thought). After scouring numerous supermarkets and beauty supply stores, I searched through a Black in Colombia Facebook group to see where I could get a stupid little sleep bonnet to protect my stupid little hair. The answer was Facebook Marketplace, and I eventually found a woman who said she would sell me a sleep bonnet for 20,000 pesos (that’s about $4), and we could meet the next day behind a grocery store in the San Antonio barrio.
Though I’d switched metro lines at the San Antonio stop multiple times, I’d never actually been to San Antonio. Every online blog I’d found about Medellin said to avoid it; it was crowded, and petty crime was rampant. This message was reinforced by the Uber driver who dropped me off: “There’s a lot of robberies here, I’ll drop you off as close as I can, be careful.” (I was torn between feeling anxious about his advice and excited that I could understand it all in Spanish.) I buried my phone deep in my backpack, flipped it to the front, and trudged on to get my stupid little sleep bonnet.
When I got out of the car, though, I was awestruck. San Antonio was awesome. It was a bustling marketplace, with cute items everywhere, and it was filled with Black people. I had often walked around Medellin a little bummed that the African diaspora hadn’t quite touched the city of eternal spring. Of course, this is where they all were, in the neighborhood I had been told (several times) to avoid. Some things are always the same, no matter where you go.
Black in Colombia
Colombia has one of the largest Black diasporas in the world, but the estimated number varies greatly. Some sources say 10%, some say 40%. It’s complicated by the fact that a large number of Afro-Colombians don’t claim their African heritage; there was actually a significant decline in self-reported Afro-Colombians in the last census, likely due to issues of racism.
While racism exists in Medellin, both for locals and — to some degree — expats, I have had no issues thus far. Black people are native here, so it will always be a less dicey option than Asia (where I often got stares, and met a fellow Black traveler who was turned away from a hostel) or Eastern Europe. Colorism is strong, however, with the darkest Afro-Colombians facing pretty much all of the racism. I’m a medium shade of Black, as well as Estadounidense (or United States-ian), which shields me in most situations. Even still, when you’re an only, you feel it; spending all my time in the affluent neighborhoods of Laureles and Poblado, I was often the only. It’s also wonder I couldn’t find sleep bonnets, or Black hair care products, or sunscreen that worked on my skin tone — about 80% of Black people in Colombia are living below the poverty line; they did not have collective buying power.
Medellin, in particular, is a “whiter” city; it didn’t utilize slave labor, so had virtually no Afro-Colombian population until migration to cities picked up in the 1970s. It seems fitting then that Medellin, one of the whitest cities in Colombia, is the new hub for tourists and digital nomads. (One of my last stops in Colombia will be Cali, a city that’s 80% Afro-Colombian, because you know I can’t leave without getting to know my cousins.)
As I got back to Laureles and grabbed a guanabana juice from my favorite, gringo-friendly avocoderia, I thought — yet again — about the painful universality of the challenges faced by the African diaspora. Poverty, police brutality, colorism, structural racism, income inequality run rampant everywhere Black people have migrated to, voluntarily or otherwise, or even (in cases like South Africa) just existed in. There was so much solidarity to be remembered on the long, long, long journey to equality.
What I’m Up To
This coming week will be my last in Medellin. Two friends and I will travel down south together to Colombia’s coffee region, and then to the city of Cali, before we part ways. In the time we have left, we’ve focused on circling back to our favorite Medellin spots. On Thursday, we made a return trip to Comuna 13, an area that was heavily impacted by Medellin’s violent past, but is now rebranding itself as Medellin’s top grafitti art destination. In addition to the incredible street art, you’ll find amazing views of the Comuna from one of the many bars on top of its hill.
See below for views, and an example of how bad my hair is looking after six weeks of sleeping on straight cotton.