In Colombia there are approximately 68 native languages spoken by nearly 850,000 people. Among them are 65 indigenous or Indo-American languages, two Creole languages spoken by Afro-descendants: Creole with an English lexical base spoken in San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina and Ri Palenque with a Spanish lexical base, spoken in San Basilio de Palenque, Cartagena and Barranquilla, where palenqueros reside. Many of these languages are at risk and the next generations will not know them.

The Colombian population results from a mixture of Africans, Native Americans and Europeans. The Caribbean coast, especially, has this mixture very well distributed and can be seen in the faces and bodies of its inhabitants. Some families (like mine) seem to have come out of a United Colors of Benetton advert: blondes, redheads, blacks, natives and even some like me who seem more Asian than Colombian (according to my European friends)… I like!

I like to know that my body reflects that ancestral variety… and that my blood, character and tastes also reflect that genetic miscellanea.

And if I take into account what epigenetics says about genetic memory, I would understand why I felt as at home in the savannahs of South Africa as I do in Madrid or Barranquilla.