Sewyaka Indigenous School, Palomino, Colombia


One of the highlights of this trip to Colombia was the opportunity to visit a school in the mountains outside of Palomino. We went on Friday, July 24. The Kogi are an indigenous tribe of Colombia, the only tribe that was not ruled by the Spanish. They have managed to maintain their cultural integrity high up in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains. This mountain range makes a triangle along the northern coast of Colombia and is the only snow-capped mountain range that arises from sea level and can be seen from the beaches below. Our path up the mountain followed the Palomino River.

We had been told it would be a two hour hike up and two hours back and everyone was prepared for the ascent to the school. What we may not have understood was that we would be trekking after a 5:00am wake-up for a 5:55am departure to the airport, a one hour flight to Santa Marta and a one hour bus ride to Palomino. We had breakfast bags from the hotel, a meat and cheese sandwich, juice and a piece of fruit, and what has become a recognizable collection of snacks: roasted corn, breakfast fruit bars, peanuts, dried cranberries.

We gathered in Palomino at a cultural center to use the bathroom before heading out on the trek at around 12:30pm. It was at least 90 degrees and bright sunshine by the time we headed out. We started down a street that led to a narrower dirt road that quickly became an incline up into the mountain. I walked for about 15 minutes before starting to feel the heat and humidity and a bit of starry eyed lightheadedness. Simón, one of the group leaders, walked along with me for a while and then stayed as I stopped to rest. After waiting a few minutes he offered that I could ride the horse that we had brought on the trek. Edwin, one of two young men accompanying us on the trip, had been riding the horse when we started. Whether he knew that he was likely to lose his ride or whether they had brought the horse anticipating the need, I will never know. I agreed to ride the horse seeing that as the only alternative to staying on the trek. I mounted the horse, Sia, for what turned out to be a different kind of challenge. The first discovery was that the stirrups were the metals objects we had seen at the hacienda earlier in the week; made from metal and a full front "boot." 

The path was no wider than one person all the rest of the way and the terrain was sandy, rocky and root-covered in some places. I quickly realized that the only way to feel safe on the horse walking along the edge of the cliffs was to move with him. Leaning into the inclines; leaning back for the descents; allowing my body to rise with the jumps down rocky steps. I hung on tightly to the horn the entire ride especially when Edwin gave the directive to hold on "duro."

About half-way through the jungle we stopped at a swimming hole to eat lunch and watch some people tubing down the river. The river flows right into the Caribbean. It was then that three people decided not to continue on the hike, suffering mostly from overheating. I was able to continue on by horseback to complete the ride to the school and back to town. By all reports from the people who completed the trek, it was a challenging hike. We arrived at the school around 3:00pm.

Sewyaka appeared in the distance and we entered through an opening in a fence to first pass through a property with a house and family. It's not clear if the family is related to the school, but there was a woman and her 5 children. There was an assortment of dogs, chickens, pigs, and turkeys and baby chicks and puppies. The woman and some of the children were in traditional off-white cotton dresses; a heavy cotton, hand sewn into a tunic style dress. We saw the same garment for men when we met the teachers. The men wore a tunic top, pants that gathered just below the knees with a black band to finish off the edge and rubber boots that came to the top of the pants. They said that they grow their own cotton.

The Koghi have a carrying sack that they use for everything including carrying children on their backs with the shoulder strap held across their foreheads. The bags are usually made from agave leaves and are a fine netting. The men carry at least one bag for their coca leaves and poporo, a gourd that contains the lime or calcium of crushed shells that is necessary to release the power of the coca leaves. 

The classrooms and school buildings surrounded a large courtyard. We sat around a tree to listen to the teachers talk about the school. The stones in the center,  arranged to create chairs, closest to the tree are reserved for the elders. There are 85 children at the school, 1-5 grades, mostly boys. They talked a little about the challenge of getting girls to school; girls are believed to need protection and the idea that boys and girls should be treated the same way challenges their belief in the balance of male and female. They are also unsure of the future of education for their children because the only alternative is to leave this area of the mountain and attend a school with other groups. There is great commitment to sustain the Kogi culture through education, but encouraging children to leave the Kogi villages threatens that.

As we sat in the courtyard we were under a mango tree and nearby their were trees laden with starfruit. The guide encouraged us to find good fruit on the ground, rinse it off and eat it as we toured the village.

We entered the village that is adjacent to the school to see where the mammas, elders, teachers and students live. The huts are either woven palm leaves or mud, but the roofs are all made from palm leaves. We passed a small area of plantain trees, one of the staples of their diet. They are, it seems, completely self-sufficient producing their own food. The mamas live in one hut and the women and children live in others. Husbands and wives do not share the same house. There was one structure dedicated to cooking.

We arrived back in Palomino at around 7pm and it was already dark. As soon as we arrived at the hotel the staff helped move the luggage to the rooms and we split up into threes and fours to share large rooms. The sound of the surf was very strong and you could barely see the water through the trees in the dark. We gathered for dinner on a deck with large handmade wooden tables and chairs before ending the evening with a visit from the man who had helped to found Sewyaka Indigenous School. His daughters and son-in-law ran the hotel and he lived there.

He described himself as part of a hippie movement in the 70's searching for the answer to his existentialist questions. He had moved up onto the mountain, earned the trust of the Koghi and integrated himself into their life style. His children also grew up with the Koghi. At one point he said that he believes that the past is what's in front of us; we can see it and know what happened. The future, however, is behind us; unknown to us. This reversal of traditional thinking that we look toward the future and turn our backs on the past was compelling.