Happy Tuesday everyone,

Many of you know I celebrated my birthday last week with a trip to beautiful Cartagena, Columbia.  I’d been wanting to go there for years, but really didn’t know what to expect.  I can honestly say, Cartagena really surprised me.  If I had to sum up my entire experience into one phrase, it would be “Go where you are celebrated”.

All women are embraced there, but I feel like women of color are truly celebrated in Cartagena.  There are African influences everywhere! In particular, billboards, breathtaking murals and beautiful pictures of women of color all around.  This is often taken for granted, but as a woman of color my trip to Cartagena was the first time I ever felt really embraced in a country.  Not only were women of color posted everywhere, people were extremely friendly, nice and helpful towards me.  Again, something I haven’t always experienced in other countries.  By the way, since there were so many beautiful murals, I’ll be posting another blog post of the murals, and the Walled City.

Once of the major reasons why I’ve had this colorful, vibrant, and happy city on my bucket list for so long is because of the Afro-Columbian community that I wanted to learn more about, as well as where the african influences originated from.  I can be bit of a history fanatic at times, and as I’ve grown older my desire to learn more about it has grown exponentially.

On my second day in Colombia, I took a tour to San Basilio de Palenque, which is an african village almost an hour outside of Cartagena.  The Palenques, who are direct decendents of slaves brought there in the 1600’s have preserved their african culture, customs, way of living, traditional music and dances, and spiritual beliefs.

Local school where the Bantu language is taught to children.

I was very surprised to see most things still in tact from the 1600’s when the village was started by Benkos Bioho (male version of Harriet Tubman) with 36 slaves.  It was also fascinating to learn how the women built maps and roads in their hair braiding for the slaves to get oriented in the woods and escape to Palenque where they were considered free.

From what I gathered Palenque was able to survive this long because of its distance from Cartagena.  The language in Palenque is Bantu, which is a spanish-based creole influenced by the Kilongo language of Congo and Angola, and also by Portuguese, the language of the slave traders who brought African slaves to South America in the 17th century.

While there, it was wonderful to see the dances and music performed by the children of Palenque.

The Palenques are very proud of their blackness and embrace it, since there wasn’t always a time when they could. It was declared by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site in 2005.

“Wakanda Forever” with our official tour guide from Palenque. You can not visit the village without an official tour guide.

Famous statue of Benkos Bioho breaking away of chains

Ereilis Navarro Cáceres promoting her book on the history that surrounds the turban.

All in all my trip was enlightening and enriching for my soul.  There’s still so much I didn’t have a chance to do while there so I’m definitely planning a trip back.

Palanque Tour Information: Contact Alex Rocha at Experience Real Cartagena

Love,

The Ultimate Fashionista