Protesters lined the perimeter of the conference centre holding signs in Spanish: No queremos menos niños. Di no al control poblacional. We do not want fewer children. Say no to population control. Life-size replicas of forceps and real baby dolls, strewn atop garbage cans, graphically made the point. Although the protestors were silent, their signage jarred my thoughts.
I was a delegate to the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Bogota, Colombia. As a Black, Haitian, Christian woman, I had not arrived at this work through theory. I arrived through my family history.
I have a distant cousin in Haiti who, facing an unwanted pregnancy with nowhere to turn, attempted to end it herself using a hanger. She nearly bled out. She carried both the physical scars of the procedure and the deeper, lasting trauma of a decision she was forced into by the absence of family planning resources. Another cousin who, after three consecutive pregnancies, went to the contraception clinic and came home quietly triumphant.
“I am on planning now,” she said, a newfound lightness in her voice.
I saw family planning as an embrace of life. Not only the life of the baby, but the life of the mother, whose humanity included the right to choose when to bring a life into this world. I had seen what happened when women had no options — no clinic, no information, no safety net — and that absence, more than anything else, was what drove me toward international development.
Crossing the protestors’ line that first morning, I did not waver in my beliefs. In fact, I viewed the scene with detached amusement, quickly wiping a smirk from my face. Vendors hawking candies, snacks, and trinkets and business-suited pedestrians darting between honking horns appeared oblivious to the tension between the activists and the conference attendees.
Seeing other delegates taking photos, I began snapping my own, keeping a respectful distance. An uneasiness settled in my stomach. While I had hoped to document a moment that I could reflect upon later, I doubted I would post these pictures as I usually do. Amid the cacophony and commotion swirling around them that morning, the demonstrators remained unmoved. Statue-like in their stillness, they stood against what they perceived as population control,their quiet dignity unruffled by the morning’s happenings.
The day before, our delegation’s CEO had warned us about a potential protest. Not knowing how many protestors there would be or what their strategy would be, we devised a plan.
“We could arrive at the conference and leave at the same time,” suggested one.
“Let’s stay inside the conference centre as much as possible,” offered another.
The CEO reminded us that safety was paramount. But what I observed that first morning was a disciplined demonstration, almost liturgical in its restraint. Although I remained vigilant, I no longer felt a physical threat.
I entered the towering glass building, flicking my badge like a shield and moving through the carnival-like atmosphere with ease— until an enormous pink plastic condom adorned with bold letters declaring “consent is sexy” stopped me cold. Participants played interactive video games while others greeted one another, posing for photos in front of the welcome table. A banner with large printed letters “ICFP” left no doubt to passers-by of the convention’s purpose.
Snippets of overheard conversations generously sprinkled with the words “autonomy” and “access” confirmed our shared language. Yet just across the sidewalk stood another gathering, equally proud, equally certain, holding their signs toward passing cameras. Two moral visions occupying the same block of pavement.
The next day, as I crossed the protestors’ line, I looked at them. A woman stood near the entrance, her grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, a pink sweater soft against the morning air. She gripped her sign with the quiet confidence of someone who had long since made up her mind. Beside her, a younger woman — thirties, perhaps — held a poster bearing the angel of death. A young man chatted alongside two women.
This was a case of misinformation, I concluded. I spoke Spanish but did not dare to spark a conversation. As someone who was formally educated, credentialed, affiliated with an international institution, and a bearer of funding streams and policy frameworks, I wanted to explain: “We are not here to colonise your country. We are not here to diminish your families. We are advocating for informed choice, for bodily autonomy, for the dignity of women navigating constrained circumstances.”
Haiti, my country, endured French colonisation and later U.S. occupation. I understood it not as an abstraction but as an ancestral wound.
“Haiti used to be beautiful,” my mother said, eyes glistening, referencing the time before the second U.S. invasion of 1994. “People got along — neighbours trusted each other, ate at one another’s tables. Food was affordable, the gardens were plentiful, and the government buildings were still standing, still intact.”
While a disconnect lingered between me and the protestors, I merged seamlessly with the 3,000 attendees from across the globe. I recognized something in the Nigerian women’s intricate headdresses and textiles — not quite home, but familiar enough to steady me. The men stared at me, visibly curious about my ancestry.
“Are you Nigerian?” one asked, a wide smile spreading across his face.
“No,” I replied, “but my husband is.”
“You look so young — I would never have guessed you were married,” he said, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.
He leaned in to ask, “Do you know how to make Nigerian food?”
“I know how to make vegetable soup,” I said, a smile forming.
“I love vegetable soup — and egusi too.”
“Egusi is one of my favourites as well.” I chuckled.
For a suspended moment, I felt myself between atmospheres—the climate-controlled optimism of global solutions and the unmediated refusal of a public sidewalk. Only later, when I returned home to Maryland, would I comprehend the inversion taking place. Colombia was not revealing itself to me; rather, it was reflecting me, stripped of intention, and interpreted as inheritance.
Yet what I experienced on that sidewalk was not merely a different point of view; it was misrecognition. I occupied the role historically imposed upon others: perceived coloniser, foreign agent, emissary of demographic control. I felt the dissonance viscerally. But gradually, another possibility unsettled me: perhaps they were not misunderstanding me. They were identifying a structure larger than my biography.
On that pavement, my intersecting identities refracted sharply. I was a Black, Haitian, Christian immigrant—identities forged within marginalisation. Yet I was privileged. At the conference, I overheard my colleagues lamenting that it was “too bad” their delegations were incomplete because visas had not been secured. As an American citizen, my passport afforded me visa-free travel to Colombia, with no barriers or challenges standing between Bogotá and me. While those working in-country faced the very real threat of reduced hours or termination, my position at the U.S. headquarters offered me steady employment.
In my profession, family planning is driven by empowerment through education. We combat misinformation and disinformation, relentlessly vetting the evidence. Yet outside, the people on the sidewalk defended their right to decide for themselves, on their own terms. They rejected what they perceived as demographic engineering by external powers. Their signs did not differentiate between malicious intervention and benevolent advocacy. To them, we were part of the same long story of outsiders arriving with plans.
The same structures I have critiqued for perpetuating inequity were the structures I represented. Disinformation about the conference’s purpose did not simply mischaracterise us; it displaced me with the comfortable coherence of my identity. I was no longer solely the descendant of the colonised. I was the face of intervention.
By the time I left Bogotá, my urge to correct had subsided. I thought about how instinctively I tried to be understood, how quickly I looked for clarification instead of curiosity. The men and women I encountered did not know my personal history, the complexity of policy safeguards, or the ethical principles behind our initiatives. But they saw patterns. They saw the choreography of global institutions entering cities with solutions, the ease with which we discuss choices within air-conditioned conference halls equipped with translation headsets and catered lunches. In a nation marked by colonial extraction, political intervention, and externally imposed reforms, foreign presence is never neutral.
The reflection offered by that sidewalk did not indict me as an individual villain. It implicated me as a participant in systems that predated my birth and will persist beyond my tenure. I did not depart Colombia triumphant, nor did I depart defeated. I left altered.
Bogotá did not need my correction. It offered me confrontation. It insisted that I consider how swiftly global actors mobilise across borders, how readily we universalise our frameworks, how easily we mistake consensus within conference walls for consensus beyond them. The protesters’ refusal was not merely obstruction; it was a lesson.
Travel, I now suspect, becomes decolonial when it demands a willingness to be read critically. It demands resisting the instinct to overwrite that reading with self-justification. It requires acknowledging that one can be simultaneously oppressed and complicit, marginalised, and empowered.
The sidewalk became a mirror. Reflecting not my intentions, but my positionality.
