Archdiocese teaches displaced Colombians skills to survive in city

Published: 2007-05-25

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNS) -- Maria, a schoolteacher, fled to Bogota after outlaw groups bombed her home and kidnapped her son twice. "My life has been a tragedy, and only God's will has me here," said Maria. "At this moment, I don't know what to do, I don't eat, I don't sleep." Maria is not alone. Paola and her family took refuge in Bogota after leftist guerrillas ordered them to abandon their home and farm within five hours. Marina fled her hometown after guerrillas tried to recruit her 12-year-old son to make him into a fighter. And Neiya and her family fled from their farm at midnight, after right-wing paramilitaries murdered many neighbors and demanded extortion payments from the rest. Today these four are studying hairstyling in a school run by the Archdiocese of Bogota, where hundreds forced from their homes by Colombia's drug-fueled civil war learn skills such as baking, how to do manicures and pedicures, computing and fashion design. "The courses are so that they themselves can be protagonists of their own lives, their own stories," said Scalabrinian Sister Teresinha Monteiro, the Brazilian-born director of the Foundation for the Attention to the Migrant. "They know very well the work of the countryside, but in the city they suffer greatly."

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