Daniela Hernández Silva^[1]GLOBED MA in Education Policies and Development, and Harvard specialist in Sustainability and Innovation. Producer and Host of the FreshEd podcast in Spanish Aula Divergente … Continue a ler& Miguel Filipe Silva^[2]Invited Assistant Professor at Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Oporto University and Researcher at the Centre for African Studies of the University of Oporto.

(*) By Amanda Ainengonzi, Gerald Tagoe & Laura Krehbiel.

CONTEXT

By Miguel Filipe Silva

During the year 2021, I was introduced, by a good friend, to the Fresh ED podcast, hosted by Will Brehm^[3]https://freshedpodcast.com/.. In May of that year appeared the 1st episode of the FLUX^[4]https://freshedpodcast.com/flux/. series “where graduate students turn their research interests into narrative-based podcasts”.

I decided to listen. I didn’t expect anything new. Just another podcast. This one had a title that piqued my curiosity. “Defying the Odds in Rural Colombia?”^[5]https://freshedpodcast.com/flux-silva/. by Daniela Hernández Silva. Colombian.

Since that day I have listened to it several times and addressed it to many people. “Defying the Odds in Rural Colombia?” is a magical experience.

It is an academic paper made of heard words. Daniela follows every step of the method, but the heard words are not those of the classical academy describing its object of study. These voices are silenced to make room for those of the oppressed, through a narrative that savours the Latin American magic realism of authors such as García Márquez, and which makes us reflect on the enormous road we must travel to know how to silence our arrogance, coming from the conviction of being the holders of knowledge.

After all, there are other form(s) and format(s) to make learning happen – the question marks overcome the certainties and we transform objects of study into subjects who travel codo a codo^[6]Side by side. with us through common questions, feelings, and whispers. Subjects that exist, live, and breathe, not for us but despite us. Defying the Odds.

I decided to contact Daniela Hernández for an online seminar in the DevCO classes I teach in EIMAS^[7]European Interdisciplinary Master African Studies. https://www.eimas.eu/en/., in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. She agreed.

We listened to Daniela unveil what was behind the scenes in “Defying the Odds in Rural Colombia?”.

This seminar sparked, I think, the will to work the Development area with all our senses and not only with “the head”^[8]Some students decided also to make a podcast and others wrote a play..

… and sometimes, even if only sometimes, the academy goes out, rip the chains, rip the ties and poetry happens… some, times…

(RE) CONTEXT

By Daniela Hernández Silva

If we all took the time to listen to each other, the world would be different.

Listening allows us to understand our own reality and the reality of others. It allows us to make visible our struggles, the struggles of those around us, and of those from distant contexts whom we call the otherness. Listening allows us to understand that in the end the other’s struggle is my own and that under the sky we all breathe the same air.

After 6 years of research in the remote rural areas of Colombia, where I had the opportunity to listen to the voices of children, parents, and teachers, I realized that what I had heard could not only be expressed through ink and paper; there was something more that the structure of an essay did not allow sharing. I decided, then, to produce the podcast episode “Defying the odds in rural Colombia?” for FreshEd Flux in 2021 to give sound to my research results through magical realism. I turned the more than 200 voices that I had interviewed and carefully listened, into the voice of a boy named Jose, the main character who tells in the first person their context and my perception of their reality.

On the other side of the world, Amanda Ainengonzi, Gerald Tagoe and Laura Krehbiel actively listened to Jose’s voice and my reflections about it, and found affinity in experience and feeling. They listened to their heart, their life experiences, that of their neighbours and those of other contexts, and were inspired, then, to create the wonderful poem “Some, Times”.

“Some, Times” is a poem that reaches deep into the hearts of those who take the time to really listen to it and demonstrates, once again, that the content of a deep analysis comes to life and gains power when it is mixed with art and the feelings that go through the experience. “Some,Times” uses words and poetry as a means of expression of inequality, effort, socio-economic reality, and hope. It is a mirror of how thousands live and a testimony of the shared struggles we face as humanity.

SOME, TIMES

By Amanda Ainengonzi, Gerald Tagoe & Laura Krehbiel

In my home,

For some

Food flows as the rushing Nile.

Down the aisle

Down the aisle

Day and night

Day and night

For them, hunger is a fantasy, a lazy man’s fallacy

Or just a means to get a great figure.

In my home,

For some

Food does not flow.

They walk and work a mile

Mile on mile

Mile on mile

Rain or sun

Rain or sun

Day and night

Day and night

Yet still, that hack does not work, and hunger spreads the more.

In my home,

For some

Lads and lasses,

Books and classes are a right that they can bite and eat Bite and eat

Bite and eat

ALAS

The money is there

The teacher is there

The language they hear

The books are clear!

In my home,

For some

Lads and lasses

Books and classes are a fantasy

A rich person’s opportunity

With tattered books,

Heavy hoes

Broken English

Bare footed

Mile on mile

They know, this opportunity will not heal their reality.

In my home

For some

Home sweet home is sweet

It’s safe and sound

Safe and sound,

Full of mama’s love

Papa’s laugh

As friendships thrive

Us all in oceans of hope,

sailing into limitless opportunity

In my home,

For some

Home is cold

Cold as cold can get.

With screams of guns

Echoes of wars

Making us

Taking us

And all our hopes and dreams

In my home

In your home

In this dome

I have a dream of a WORLD where:

Equality is for all,

Empathy will never fall

Inequality, criminality is never a probability

And Opportunity is for all humanity

so

If you can hear me

If I can hear you

If we can feel for one another without judging

Then the path to development has truly started.