‘Finding Ana:’ a Swede finds his nanny in Bolivia, 45 years later

Juan Jonsson was born in Sweden 51 years ago. He lived in Bolivia until he was six,and then settled with his family in Fuengirola, Spain. Since his early childhood in Cochabamba, he has cherished the memory of his nanny Ana. Now he has traveled into the past, documenting his journey on TikTok. Juan recently traveled to the city of Yacuiba, in the south of Bolivia, to meet Ana again. Forty-five years had passed since the last time they saw each other, when he was a child and she was a young woman in her thirties. The hug was full of emotion.

Juan’s parents had traveled to Bolivia with their three children in the 1970s to work as missionaries. When they arrived, they looked for a babysitter for Juan, the youngest, and they found Ana, who was 31 years old at the time. “I was sad because my son was terminally ill with a heart condition. My husband had been working in Alto Beni when he was killed by an industrial drill. [Juan] was a gift from God,” Ana said in an interview with the Bolivisión television show Aquí en Vivo.

To make the encounter possible, Juan launched an internet fundraising campaign titled “Finding Ana.” With the help of the woman’s son, he crossed the Atlantic to Bolivia. “She knew someone was going to visit her, but she didn’t know who,” said Juan, who is also a pastor, on Aquí en Vivo. The video shows Ana uncertain about the man at her door, until she recognizes him as the boy she knew. She hugs him and raises her hands to the sky. “When I saw him again I didn’t recognize him, but I had him in my heart. I took care of Juanito. He was six months old. He was affectionate. Later, when he got bigger, he ran after me everywhere I went. I called him ‘my Swedish cholo’ and he called me ‘my nana,’” Ana recalled.