domingo, 12 de mayo de 2013

April Showers...


The first week of April is my last in the Peace Community. It is an internal council member inviting our team to an overnight stay at his house before I leave. We hike to a place I have never been- a farm house with an avocado tree outside, overlooking the jungle with a river rushing outside from which on a clear day you can see the ocean. It is he passing us over the various deep river crossings on the back of his horse and his wife cooking us delicious (vegetarian!) meals. It is a beautiful goodbye, since neither of them would be attending my going away party in La Union.

April is celebrating Michaela’s birthday with campo chocolate chip pancakes, it is Noelia jumping like a tree frog from wall to wall of the mosquito net, killing all of the bugs that made it inside before laying down to go to bed. April is a fallen guama tree and the heyday of fruit removal that the children participate in, now that the branches are within reach. It is formal goodbyes to the internal council, and an informal goodbye to La Union with- a dance! April is dancing until four in the morning in the kiosk, eating soup and bunuelos and celebrating my near-two years in La Union.

In my goodbye to my neighbors at their weekly meeting in La Union, I said, among other things, “Remember that whenever you want you can stop and watch the hummingbirds. You can stomp in puddles and jump like a baby sheep on the football field. You can climb trees and hang like monkeys and listen to the wind through the sugarcane. Whenever you want you can tell children that you love them. You can do whatever it is that makes you the happiest, because we only get one life and despite all odds, we have to do our best to enjoy it”- I chose these particular examples because whenever I did them, people said I was crazy. And whenever I did them, I felt better.

On April 9th (the same day millions of Colombians march for Peace in the capital), after finishing my last reports and preparing to have a relaxing 72 hours to say goodbye to my neighbors before moving to Bogota, I was lying in a hammock with a particularly busy neighbor of mine. Every few months we make a “date” and go hang in my favorite kiosk in La Union, overlooking town. She said to me, “Stop working for an hour and let’s go hang out before you leave” and so we did. We were talking about how hard it is for the community to say goodbye to FOR volunteers, and how hard it is for us to leave. She said, “You should leave La Union just like you came into town, Gina- laughing.”

By four o’clock four of us were up on this hill, taking in the late afternoon sun and talking about life, when combat broke out between the FARC and the military on the opposite side of town and we were caught in the middle of army crossfire. Yes. I was, three weeks after almost dying in a boat crash, caught in the crossfire of the Colombian conflict. After it all, after the shower of whistling bullets and the diving to the ground, after running the ridgeline searching for cover and adults throwing random children in the nearest houses and locking themselves in windowless rooms and enacting our emergency response and writing up reports, after the biggest surge of adrenaline of my life (aside from, arguably, three weeks before in the Amazon) and the nervous energy to follow and the tornado of work that came out of such an emergency, after recounting with my neighbors how this happened and where they were and what they did and how scary whistling bullets are, after  one neighbor saying to me, “Your going away dance on Saturday was way better than the going away the army gave you” and another saying, “I brought you up there to say goodbye- it was almost the final goodbye to both of us!”… after all that, 72 hours later, I was uprooted from La Union to Bogota.

Without any pretty imagery to go along with it, I will say that this initiated three of the most difficult weeks of my life. Not just three of the most difficult weeks since coming to Latin America, or since working in human rights or since living in the war zone but three of the darkest weeks of my entire life.

Once able, I focused my post-traumatic self through an entire gamut of mental health services from talk therapy to acupuncture to esoteric healing to energy massage and I am thankful to be in Colombia where the approach to mental health is not based in pill-popping and where trauma is understood in general society and in the medical community at a level only a country at war could aspire to. And where trauma is taken seriously, in all its forms. I try and take my own advice from my goodbye in La Union and remind myself that whenever I want to I can _______.

In Bogota, April is an African dance class with a live drum circle that has me shaking it all out three hours a week. It is the People’s Peace Congress where I participate at a table for international protective accompaniment and then the International Day of Dance where Jeanine and I take in a salsa concert in an outdoor park and a tango show in a fancy theatre. April is reconnecting with friends and family near and far and running the Sunday ciclovia. It is a complete lack of bug bites to itch, and feeling like there is so much extra time on my hands since all of a sudden I don’t have to dedicate as much of my time to getting daily things like house cleaning and hand-washing.  In Bogota, April is live music: singing along to Systema Solar in a neighborhood bar and seeing Liza perform at the Blues and Jazz fest. It is sunny mornings and rainy afternoons. It is people, everywhere, so many of them doing everything people do in a city and feeling overwhelmed by all of this. April is a trip to a farm outside of Bogota to buy homemade yogurt and run through portreros where the cows live and breathe fresh air and get out of the city. It is preparing myself for May political work both in Bogota and in the United States.

April is the spaces we move in- physically, mentally, spiritually. And April is the trauma of war.

P.S. If you have not yet taken political action around the combat that I was caught in, and would be willing to contact the US Embassy in Bogota with your concern about the Colombian army's opening fire in a civilian populated peace community, please follow this link: 
http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/army-actions-increase-risk-for-for-peace-community/12082




miércoles, 1 de mayo de 2013

The show’s greatest theme is not politics, but the artist’s life- not justice, but beauty.



The title of my blog was a caption, pulled from a review of a long since forgotten (in my mind) off-broadway play. For some reason it rang so true in my life in February and March (even before the boat crash) that it’s re-written in three separate entries in my journal. I guess it makes sense that it caught my attention. I came to Colombia for work in large part due to my understanding of politics and justice, but recently everything has returned to me and my life- a set of experiences and situations paired with my responses and choices that melt into me, my life and its beauty.

February is white and orange butterflies on the path and hummingbirds plucking spiders from their webs. It is Guama season, and eating them with neighbors on the hill. It is the beginning of my collection of jungle treasures to take with me to the andean capital- beautiful seeds and dried flowers and river stones. February is me in the near splitz at the top of a papaya tree, not willing to let the birds eat all the fruits of the jungle and then my neighbor saying,  “you’re stretchier than an acordian.” It’s a community leader’s ancient looking mother, waving from her kitchen doorway as I start off on my trek home to the next village. It is my neighbor’s blasting vallenato across the canyon that announces her return to town and a baby playing by a clump of bananas.

February is picking, drying, smashing, toasting and grinding coffee. My first week ever in La Union in early 2011, I saw the coffee and said, “I am going to help when you pick this.” Two years later, the first harvest was ready for picking. February is the best coffee I have ever had in my life. And feeling so proud of making it myself, even though my stomach had heat rash for a week due to the toasting process.

February is a moment where everything stopped for no reason. I am in the cacao and this overwhelming thought occurs…how did I get here? And then another, also difficult question with more obvious options for answers: what is the true color of cacao? (Mauve? Purple? Yellow? Green?) And then a mix of the two- How did I get here? Purple.

February is bomber planes and armed groups (all of them) mourning the deaths of soldiers young and old as military operatives in the zone pick up, again. February is accompanying the community work days and lazing in the arms of trees until the fire ants arrive to kick me out. It is me realizing the things I have learned in La Union, like how I am good at locating where people are in the jungle by the sound of their machetes. I am good at hearing fruits fall and then finding them. I am good at being a morning person.

February is Elisabeth’s arrival to the CdP for a visit with English magazines and personal mail in tow. It is the 2012 essay called, “The Things They Googled” originally published in the Sun that everyone should read. It is music mixes and birthday packages and Christmas cards from friends far away finally arriving to my hands in La Union. February is military propaganda on the radio in the early mornings while I read poems with beautiful imagery and think to myself about how I woulda constructed them differently. February is rain. And how it calls me beside itself, to walk through it and look for Nuri’s purple and white flowers and then the mango grove. February is morning stretching and the light through sheets of water. It is treasured memories of the CdP.

Sitting with my community ‘mom,’ hummingbirds dive bomb past us as we sit outside. We say nothing- her because it is normal and not worth commenting on and I because I want it to be.

An 8 year old boy in Mulatos breaks his arm falling of a horse. The left one. In two places. The eventual ex-ray looks pretty much like mine did when I broke my arm at the age of 10. I was in that acute pain for maybe an hour between flipping off the swing-set and being sedated in the hospital. Thinking about the moment my arm snapped 20 years later still gives me a shot of phantom pain. The trauma. Jimar broke his arm in the jungle outside a village. He walked to neighboring farms with his mother to verify it was broken (ahem, I can assure you he was certain) and then rode a horse with a double fractured arm for 6 hours through thick mud and then spent the night waiting for public transport to come up to San Jose and then, rode a bumpy jeep to the hospital and waited a whole additional day for a qualified doctor to arrive and perform the surgery. It blew my mind. The different realities we live on this planet.

February is walking home in a downpour: double timing it to the river as to cross before the flashflood and then walking up the last vertical hill as a waterfall came down around me. It is visions of my neighbors walking up towards the foggy morning mountains to work. And visions of Laura Ingles when a little girl comes to say hello in her blue cloth dress with double braids before chasing her puppy down the street in the morning sun. February is the community making honey from sugar cane on valentine’s day. It’s me explaining that “honey” is a term of endearment in English and asking if husbands or wives have done anything special for their other halves. It is everyone staring blankly until one guy says, “She can pick her own flowers.” February is a spider across the floor, and packs of horses running together at full speed up the street. It is Ash Wed catching me in Apartado and my impromptu step into a church. The ash is sweat of my brow before I make it to the first river crossing on my way home.

February is the CdP commemoration of the 2005 massacre. We walk the pilgrimage to Mulatos and hear the stories of the brutal murders again. Arriving at the top of the filo, I find myself alone with a neighbor and he says, “thank you for walking with me today.” He says this because it was a year to the day that the two of us witnessed the combat that killed his son. And I said, “I think of you every time I walk here.” And he says, “I can’t believe…” and is cut off by more people arriving. In Mulatos and La Resbalosa, we honor the memories of the community leaders and the children killed in the brutal massacre of 2005. We witness a truly democratic process as the CdP holds its elections for the internal council. Mulatos! Green parrots in a dense jungle! Beautiful green mountains! People flooding in from all different community villages and from places all over the world! Dancing in the center of town under a spread of stars! Jungle flowers! All things beautiful. Then Ale leaves and another round of training starts. I realize I have had 13 different co-workers since I started working with FOR and I pump myself to start yet another training process with two new co-workers in March. Transition. Growth. Change. February is more children leaving La Union to study in cities far away. And Jamie arriving to La Union for the first time.

March arrives with a bang: ERIN COMES! She hikes up to La Union and sees where I live. We throw a party for my god-daughter on Charit’s first birthday. We hike to the kiosks and I introduce her to my neighbors. A boy buzzes Erin’s hair as his mother looks on. We hike our way down and begin our Caribbean adventure. We bus to Cartagena and within a day I become a tourist. We meet chatty travelers in a green hostel and saunter along city streets looking at brightly colored doors and buildings. We go to an urban beach. I read The Little Prince. And Rumi. We sit at the windy shoreline and then in bookstores with postcards. Rolling waves and air-conditioning. A traveler says she hasn’t learned the past tense yet. (So, there is only the here and now?) We drink limonadas de coco and escape to an island off the coast with blue-green waters and white sand, with dusty roads and moto-taxis. We take an evening flight to Bogota and we bring sand from Varu to the Andean Highland capital. On International Women’s Day, Toto La Momposina dances to her own voice at a free outdoor concert and we are in the capital plaza, dancing cumbia. Hats and scarves and bags piling up in the center of the cumbia wheel as the dancers warm up in the chilly Bogota evening, and for a moment it is like we are back in the Caribbean.

One week later, Erin leaves and: MONICA COMES! We walk city streets and see markets. Then we take off for Leticia and nearly die when our public boat between Leticia and Puerto Narino sinks. Yes, our public speed boat sinks with us inside it, in the middle of the Amazon River. By some miracle we survive. And after it all- after the adrenaline and the escaping the sunken boat through small windows and the swimming in the Amazon between Colombia and Peru, and holding my sister with eyes wide in the middle of one of the biggest water systems of the world and the uncontrollable shaking on top of a rescue boat and the police reports and towing the upsidedown boat to the waters edge and recovering our bags- we start pulling out our waterlogged things. I open up the wet Rumi book that Erin brought me to the dedication page. It read, “for this moment.” And we continue on to our lodge in the middle of the forest. And a river runs through it- a mile wide.

We head up the Amacayacu River on a small motor-boat. We are wet, but happy to be breathing. We talk about how our surroundings are right out of National Geographic (featuring us?) and we eat new fruits- copuasu and madrona and acais right off the trees. We get Huito tattoos and see tamarin, howler, wooly and flying monkeys. We see snakes and dolphins and caimans. We put-put around in boats. We laugh. We try and breathe deep. We lay in hammocks and sleep in a wooden cabin. We hike to a ceiba. We get eaten alive by bugs. We learn about the jungle around us. We hear native stories. We see small motor-boats put-putting by in the early morning Amazonian fog. We see glowing mushrooms on the forest floor in the dark of night. I steal nummy smelling Amazon forest tree sap and lots of fruit to take home. A coconut falls. I know exactly where and I think of Uraba. The amazon forest is a lot like the forest of my home, except for that large river part. Because it is rainy season, we boat through forest that the river would normally snake around. Juli is a lovely guide. He followed his dream, too.

We do all of these activities and these things while drying our clothing from the sunken boat and setting our electronics in the sun, then pulling them out of the rain. We get sick. We have nightmares. I start thinking about everything differently. About everyone I have ever known. About everywhere I have ever been. About why we didn’t die. We spend the week in the Amazon in post-traumatic mode from almost dying in a boat crash. I hear monkeys in the night and I journal in the misty morning. The local mother makes teas of all sorts of things to make us feel better. There is a weaver-bird with a pretty song and butterflies- citris butterflies swarming around children on the indigenous reserve. There is a boy blowing bubbles while he washes his clothes and illegal removal of wood from the national forest. There are thoughts about how fragile we are and how precious life is. Everything is turbulent and then it is not. Over and over again.

And then we are on a placid dark water lake with purple water lilies watching pink dolphins. And I don’t want to swim with the dolphins because I am cold and sort of feeling ok and I had just swum in the Amazon the day before when out boat crashed. Monica is too sick too swim, but manages to look over the side of the canoe to see the dolphins all around us. Juli jumps in, but Renato says, “swim just to swim? With the anacondas and electric eels?” “No, silly,” I say, “not with those guys… with the pink dolphins.”

Monica fishes in a spot where human bones were found and she catches lots of fish. When she tosses back a big one, Renato’s heart drops, but he tries not to show that she just threw away his dinner. Monica holds a tarantula. And a snake. And a caiman. All too soon the week is over and we have to get back on a boat to go back to Leticia and my heart starts to race. Then, on the radio, a familiar vallenato comes on and I calm down thinking about dancing in the kiosk of La Union. Leaving Monica in Bogota, I cry. She says on her next visit we can definitely go to the war zone.

In mid-March and another new co-worker, Michaela, arrives. The poma flowers give way to the poma fruits. La la la! March is a neighbor saying I would be a good goalie when I catch every papaya he dislodges from the tree. March is me feeling like there is nothing linear about where we live and how we grow or how we feel and what we know, or what we live and where we go while simultaneously thinking about swim to survive programs and how everything we do prepares us for what is to come. Is it all planned? Did growing up in MN and working as a lifeguard actually prepare me for this moment of my life at age 30? March is training and prepping and reports and new roommates in my jungle home. It is a beautiful song that takes me away from my typing and out to the porch as a light rain falls. It is my neighbor giving birth while working in Mulatos and staying there for a month with her baby. It is a Meri under a flowering purple tree and Javier climbing a poma tree from the saddle of his horse to throw me down the fruits. It is veggie empanadas and cake for a first birthday party where the baby sleeps. It is downtown Bogota graffiti and an urban garden, turqoiuse Caribbean waters and being happy to come home to the Peace Community, after it all. March is nightmares of a boat filing with water and disappearing into the river and the warm love of the people around me in La Union. It is my new tomatoes in the garden. March is new thought processes and reflections like bolts of lightening.  March is a child coming to my window to say, “thank you for not drowning. I really would have missed you if you hadn’t come back.” And me responding, “No problem.” March is my tired body falling in a river without water, to find myself on the rocky bed in an inch of water, looking up at the sky. Then ringing out my clothes and having to explain to confused passersby on the path how I drenched myself (“Gina! Did it rain down below?!” “Gina, you’re so sweaty considering the sun isn’t even out!”) when the river wasn’t even rushing.

The CdP turns 16 on March 23rd. People come from all over the world and we hear about the history of the community and the dreams for the future. We dance in rubber boots in the kiosk of La Holandita. While dancing to the blaring vallenato, we don’t hear the combat ten minutes down the road in San Jose. On my walk home the next morning, Oliva is milking a cow and I stop to help her.

Then it is holy week, the third consecutive Easter week that I have spent in La Union. An early morning thunderstorm on Sunday and we lose light for 7 full days. There is candle light and buñuelos and a haunting song stuck in my head. On Holy Thursday we walk around La Union and hear about various massacres- in the cacao groves, at the river’s edge, on the hill by the kiosks. On Good Friday there is still no light and I journal by candle-light in the early morning. We walk from La Union to Apartado and hear about everyone who has been killed on that road. I speak to Padre Javier about my trauma in the Amazon and he says there is an indigenous community in Cauca where the shamans have to have a near death experience before they can be spiritual leaders in the community. They recognize that it changes you. La Union is a good place to be after a near-death experience, because most people there have had one. And I hear stories of what fear can do- (“we just threw ourselves off that cliff, swinging by a vine- imagine!”) and how from the fear comes the power and will to survive.

March ends with my calming in the midst of a storm of work and training and post-trauma. March ends with my planning for graceful goodbyes to my loved ones in the community as I prepare to move to Bogota. And as always, I have no idea what is about to come and shake me up in a whole new way.