Colombia, South America
December 16th, 2017.  
Neighborhood: El Retiro 
Localidad: Chapinero
City: Bogotá, D. C.  

            Even though I understand that some codes become universal, in a practical sense, from being used by most people in western cultures, I also know that not all of us acknowledge western traditions as being universal facts.  In fact, what does western culture mean for those being born into a not western tradition?

My first attempt to write in English, just now, made me realize that it is a proper noun (nombre propio) in British culture (capitalization). This first difference found: In Spanish, we don’t write the name of languages with capital letters even if they come from proper nouns, goes deeper... we shouldn’t write español but castellano.  Still, we do call the language after its nationality. I didn’t even know much more than the name of the king and queen of Castilla in 1492, once graduated from a public school, since I was not interested in history, at all.  I’m not feeling proud of it, I’m just being honest about my own cultural background in terms of Oral Traditions: the first step on this curriculum.

            The last time I had been to Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) in La Candelaria, in Bogotá, D.C., I couldn’t agree with Felipe Agudelo about literature as 'only' being  a written fact: “si hablamos de literatura, es escrita” (If we are talking about literature, it is written).  Particular reasons didn’t let me to orally disagree in a place called Gabriel García Márquez, since I'm not a writer.  I’m trying to be coherent with my students by doing first what I’m going to ask them to do: Write in English, one step at the time.  Dentists like me, teachers, and native agents, to whom I’m planning to meet on this trip, will need to do so, if they don't want to be not translated.  What´s the problem of being translated?

If oral health is the outcome of odontological attention, and odontology is the study of a concentric structure whose excentric position develops a function in itself, to take care of your Needs I shouldn't translate you.  I'd rather make the place for a conversation about what you’re now thinking.  Can I make a question to promote at once your self-interpretation, a dialogue, public health, and human expressions of your Self, like art does? Could Oral health be all of them?  Is Oral health our Self-interpretation?

            If you feel ill you don't go to the Dentist, you go to the Doctor, a Medical Doctor.  Do you go to the dentist to take care of your health? What's an Oral health Doctor? We know that health means more than the absence of illness but, still, dental cavities should be treated before needing a root canal, root canals should be done before losing a tooth and lost teeth should be replaced as soon as needed.  Could all these ‘shoulds’ be one Need? Are they Attended by Primary Health Care-PHC (Atención Primaria en Salud-APS)? Is it a western health concept-based system? Whose Needs are APS priorities? Are they fulfilled day-to-day by public health? or, instead, described as goals to be achieved step by step?  

Those 'steps' make the experience of disease, or the aim of graduating from college, the most chaotic period in life for most native people while living in not native cultures, like the Latin ones in Colombia.  In América, we are not even aware of being speakers of foreign languages when we´re not native speakers of any indigenous one.  There are more than 102 different Oral traditions in Colombia, just imagine how many cultures are there in South America? Oral health could make the difference by focussing on health, education and equity-producing social policies, like follow-up systems, instead of illnesses (enfermedades, in Spanish). 

So far, writing has made me aware of two differences between the two western languages: the use of capital letters and the history of Native territories.  Shakespeare and Cervantes were western writers but did they have different Oral traditions?

            Western history starts in a not western territory, upon the Sea, in Greece.  This is not a religious writing but a Regional analysis of western cultures, from not western traditions.  Excentric positions and opposite traditions are today present everywhere in South, Central, and North America, just like Marta Gómez said today in Parque de la 93, in Bogotá, Colombia.  She [1], who lives in Barcelona, sang Christmas carols including her own ones.  She was talking about war, from a western perspective, as being the outcome of Jesus presence in this world; I think it is more likely to be inequity's outcome, but she told us her story of being in Jerusalem: She thinks war is all about religion, I think it’s all about land and ambition.  I couldn’t tell her Jesus is alive, instead of buried, since there was no place to have a conversation.  She used her mouth, la boca (a word we also use in Spanish to refer to the place where a river kisses the sea), to express her interpretation of facts that most western cultures translate, so does War.  Could such translations be Our history? I think translation, in a western tradition, is an oral habit rather than an intellectual one.  Education is not 'only' about intellectual habits like writing, there're oral histories we also need to learn to be able to interpret, in both spirit and letter.

            Time narratives often become facts (hechos, in Spanish), in western histories, not on every history.  Today, also at the FCE in Bogotá, Dr. Juan Luis Castro presented his book Vivir en Piedad.  It says: “Un ser feliz es alguien que aprende a vivir en calma en medio de la dificultad” (a happy being is someone who learns to live in calmness in the middle of the difficulty).  Do you think that humankind keeps running away from pain, as Dr. Castro, also, states?  He is a Psychiatrist, and son of Piedad Córdoba (Presidential candidate in Colombia, 2018), who says “el cordón umbilical nunca se corta” (umbilical cord is never cut out), even if that was true, could we be born again? 

"Seis son los mares que hay que atravesar..." Marta Gómez

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[1] Martha Gómez was born in Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.