Mencoldes works with displaced families at several locations around the country. In its Bogot center, it receives 15-20 families a week, providing counseling and medical care, emergency food and clothing, and a variety of skills training to help family members adjust to life in the sprawling capital of 7 million people. They don't know the city, and no one here knows them. The environment is strange and seems aggressive to them. Clothes in the city are different than in the countryside.
Work is different.
According to Neira, the adjustment for uprooted women is often more difficult. Many of the women first get jobs here as maids, but in the countryside there's no washing machine, no vacuum cleaner. Something that's as ordinary for us as using a blender can leave a woman newly arrived from the countryside in tears. Besides unfamiliarity with urban culture, the displaced are often stigmatized. Remolina got a job in Bogot as a maid but was fired after two months when her boss, an army captain, learned she was displaced.