There were seven of us in the group, six of whom were of Afro-Colombian origin.We travelled to Zimbabwe last December to represent COFEP (ECLOF Colombia) at the World Council of Churches Eighth Assembly.

It is impossible to describe the emotion that overcame us as we set foot on African soil. We hugged one another and tears came to our eyes. We experienced many feelings. We remembered our ancestors had been uprooted from this continent during the time of slavery and now we were here meeting brothers and sisters with similar faces and colour. It seemed as though our blood was crying out, wanting to be recognised again in the Motherland. None of us understood what was happening and we also had the strong realisation that although we had African roots and this was clear to all through our appearance and skin colour, we could only speak Spanish and not Shona, the local language. We desperately wanted to share who we were and what we were doing in Zimbabwe with those we met. To do so we used sign language.

At first, we felt like foreigners and strangers in our Motherland. How beautiful it was then to feel our brothers and sisters welcome us. We were taught a little about their world and a few words of their language.

Accompanied by ECLOF Zimbabwe staff, we visited a few villages and learned about their “solidarity collectives”. We were struck by the absence of women among the country’s workforce at all lev-els. We discovered the existence of a latent patriarchal system.

We saw the African woman bowing respectfully to the land, asking permission to take food from it and treating her as a mother, but with a fragile hoe in her gentle hands, rather than the irreverent trac-tor. We also saw her selling her products at the Assembly, on the University of Zimbabwe campus in Harare.

For us it was like being in two worlds: one was of theory and the other practice. The two looked for ways to support each other. There was the Church, dressed to the hilt in all its different colours, and represented by many races and languages. There were God’s People, equally beautifully dressed and with a wealth of expression. In the business hall, the Church was writing doc-uments in support of its People.

Outside in the Padare or “meeting place” the Church’s People made suggestions at special workshops which dealt with many different topics including ecumenism, unpayable international debt, the experiences of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, human rights, the environment, women’s rights in the Church, neo-liberalism, racism, free sexual expression, street children, uprooted peoples and so on. Everyone could share their ideas and needs amidst an atmosphere of tolerance and respect.

This encounter with other churches, as well as with brothers and sisters of other races, cultures and languages was a total-ly new experience for us.

We were also impressed by the worship services held every morning in a huge tent before the day’s business began. There were moving moments for us including saying the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed together in different languages, singing hymns and songs in many languages, sometimes including our own, Spanish. We felt God present as Father and Universal Mother, making it possible to express our-selves through those creative liturgies in which we not only asked and implored for protection, but also gave thanks!

When we left Africa we also left behind friends who are now our brothers and sis-ters. In a symbolic act we brought back with us a handful of African soil which we had picked up on one of our visits to the villages. Back in Colombia, we mixed it with soil from our land as part of a liturgy of thanks to God for making our African experience possible.

Olga Lucia Álvarez is Executive Director of ECLOF Colombia