AGUA DE PANELA

In the early 1980s, a woman from Caicedonia, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, took a flight whose final destination was London, England. This lady, who knew little of the world, stepped out of her routine to discover the unnamable and to sit with uncertainty.

She, uncertainty herself, so used to being feared, to being eyed from afar with clenched fists, did not expect to find herself sitting elbow to elbow with Oneglia, that woman from Caicedonia whose presence barely stirred her. Not because she was brave, but because even on the other side of the world, her hips still swayed like the sugarcane fields, and her words still tasted of panela.