URGENT ACTION FOR PEACE COMMUNITY!

please take the time to do this important action to support the peace community. pretty please.
xoxo
g

https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11353

July's Days of Independence

David, the new recruit, arrives the first week of July… just in time to sponge roll my hair to the tune of Prince for PRIDE. (Welcome to the team, David! We take your training very seriously! Here, put on this dress and march with us!) Sparkly nails and face paint and glitter and rainbow tights and sweater shorts and marching/skipping/dancing down the street. Drag queens and rainbow vests. Banners and floats and songs and chants. A military “tank” made of rainbow balloons and love. Kings and queens and calendar girls. QUEERDO stickers handed out like candy, silver fake eyelashes sparkling in the sun in front of my eyes and visions of Isaac squealing with glee as he tossed glitter at passersby.

A couple days later, the new recruit reminds me of the U.S. holiday at hand and I feel more expat than ever. Also on the 4th of July, the home of a family we accompany was burnt to the ground by paramilitaries in the war zone. Fireworks.

July was lavender sprouts growing in our urban garden and anarchist literature sprawled across my bed. July was peaceful resistance to militant oppression misrepresented by the press in Cauca. July was emails from Erin about the white nights of Russia and Bill running the Olympic torch in London. It was my joy at catching a glimpse of backstroke through a tienda window and seeing the U.S. take a gold. July brought time alone in the office during which I sang famous vallenatos, replacing my name wherever I found appropriate. It was Bringing It All Back Home showing up on ITunes shuffle and then pumping through my veins and reminding me of all times. It was light from the full moon pouring into my room. A tango show at an outdoor amphitheater, Bogota’s skyline rising behind the band shell. July brought dates with Hemingway and then Krauss, and parasites sometime dormant that suddenly sprang to life in my tummy. July was trips to clinics and medication. It was my mind’s rapid fire while simultaneously translating a panel on US military bases in Colombia. July was hiking Monseratte with Em and talking about home. It was Maracuyá juice and popsicles. The sound of traffic in the rain. Laying on a bench in the sun on Saturday, the surrounding office buildings and plaza abandon for the weekend. A rain so light, that in the streetlamp it looked like snow. The moon shining between high-rises. July was human rights documentaries and dinner parties and an impromptu viewing of Mary Poppins with Emily. The voice of the tamale vendor outside the window and our homeless neighbor smoking crack in his bunny slippers in front of a wall colorful with graffiti. It was Em and my combined disappointment when the building across the street changed owners and they painted that graffiti white. July brought a seven-day trip to the La Union.

Most of the time in the community was spent training David, but some other things happened too, in that place where time slows down: the negra came down with dengue and my parasites were put in their place. at comunitario every mosquito in uraba bit me, i saw a snake, i sat in cacao trees and listened to the rhythmic whacking of the machetes underneath me, and i stared at the cut muscles flexing in the arms of the men that swung those machetes. rosalba gave me beans. gelita gave me hugs. arelis and i laughed and planned danielito's first birthday party for when i get back. lina kept buscando teta in my shirt, leading her grandmother to say i really must be her daughter. amparo and i talked shit about everything beautiful. and planted flowers- flowers that we stole from la gorda in arenas altas last year as sprigs, then amparo grew to shrubs, and finally were big enough to be transplanted in the FOR garden/jungle. nuri and i had a date swinging in hammocks in the highest kiosk and laughing and talking about the sunset. i tried out the new tireswing on the filo that flies out over the sugarcane field. i danced with leani in jesusa's kitchen while her and mari made morning arepas. i talked with men about jailtime and houses burned to the ground. about death and threats and dying. i saw eduar's grave. and ottoniel's. and i saw a dead horse in the stream at the second crossing, being eaten by buzzards. i couldn't stop watching as the water flowed by. children swam downstream. later in the week its eyes and lips had been picked away. as the river flowed by. and children saw downstream. the electricity went out in a storm, so i played cards with fanny and cristian and moni and arelis by candlelight. i ate sugarcane with javier. i ate one of the last avocados from our garden tree (first harvest!) and one of the first zapotes from the community cacaotera. i climbed mango trees and got a couple of the last mangas from the groves outside the cementary. i listened as people told the stories of the months i had missed. the stories of the bellies growing and the babies growing and the gardens growing and the harvests growing and the war growing. on the 20th colombia’s independence came and went, in much the same (no-fanfare) fashion as the U.S. one earlier in the month. i got muddy and dirty and sunkissed and happy. and then i left.

I ate breakfast in the community on Saturday morning at first light and was back in Bogota in time for dinner. That transition is always a shock to my system. I don't even know what that place does to me... but it does. Em was out of town when I got home and thus I went from intense social interaction for 7 days to a day of full and complete silence. I started reading the history of love. I cried. I went on a cooking binge. I made velvety black beans and lemon-thyme wheat bread. I made brownies and lentil stuffed cucumber peppers. I made quinoa salad and banana bread. I reveled in leftovers and the smells coming from the kitchen. I baked a red velvet cake for Isaac’s going away party.

I started smoking again. And then I quit, again.

Last weekend I played Teho for the first time. Teho is an ingenious little game: picture a mound of mud. Insert a metal ring just under a layer of that mud. Set little packets of gunpowder around that ring. Walk twenty paces away. Turn around and throw shot-put style metal discs at your mound and try to make the packets explode. Indeed. Emily and I spent the better part of a year avoiding gunpowder in Uraba, just to come play with it in the capital. The more beer I drank, the less I jumped at the explosions. By the end of the game, I was getting pretty good. Oh, Colombia.

On my Sunday ciclovia run, I crossed paths with the Bogota marathoners. I ran with them for awhile. Then I clapped for them for awhile.

Also last weekend, I started to feel a blister on my big toe, just under the nail. (Curious place for a blis… (my own thought cut myself off)… this is not a blister…) I looked closer and realized the nasty truth- it was a nigua. One week in the campo and I come back with a nigua. Gross. Sitting under a lamp in the capital, every now and again gazing out over the city skyline, I punctured a hole and then, first searching and then grabbing with tweezers, I pulled out a burrowing worm and its nest of eggs from underneath my skin. As if the juxtaposition of  La Union and Bogota were not visceral enough before… ay ay ay. In the office I told Claudia the story and she laughed at the idea that I couldn’t find a boyfriend in Uraba, but I managed to bring back both parasites and worms to the capital.

I am kicking off August with a weekend away in Pereira. And then I will be bringing it all back home. Summer in the north country! Life as an ever-expanding thing of beauty. A forever collection of love. My brother has been saying ‘A.T. 2012’ a lot lately. Come, speak of the future.