April, come she
will
If April was all about trauma, then May and June were the start of
recovery- both automatically brought about by time and intentionally focused on as the time goes on.
May, she will
stay
The first week in May saw Liza and Emily return to Bogota and the
office. I am definitely happy to have them back after a very traumatic three
weeks- from the time of being caught in combat and then uprooted from the Peace
Community in a snowballing mess of decision making which left me alone
in Bogota during a critical post-trauma time.
Now that we are three again, it is back into political work mode around
said combat. It is retelling the events of April 9th time and time
again, recounting irregular army practices and irresponsible actions. It is meeting
after meeting in nice, clean, government buildings that make the kiosks of La Union seem like a dreamland far away, even
though I know the combat was less than a month before in the same country.
Everything becomes relative to that traumatic event and how it is dealt with.
Everything I had been and was now somehow linked back first to those few
moments, and then to the extended time in my mind, alone with my thoughts, in
the weeks afterward.
May is transition, again, out of La Union. It is recognizing my
physical presence in the capital, but sensing my mind and soul and heart really
still pumping in the jungle of La Union. It is a visit from Jon Patberg, a
coworker that initially trained me upon my joining of FOR in 2011, and feeling
the power of old friends in healing after such a rough couple months.
May is a continued concerted effort to not lose track of myself, but
feeling like I am sitting in limbo, even at home. It is recognition that I am no
longer sleeping and noticing my body in high-alert mode nearly all the time. It
is not being able to relax and watching my mind play out its own version of
time conquers all. May 9th marks one month since the combat. May is watching hard-hat workers out my bedroom window, and the red
brick building that rises up around them in their efforts. They make me think
about building things. May is being utterly unphased after a robbery on the
street leaves me without cash or wallet and then makes me wonder- does
surviving make us more fearless or more fearful?
May is an anarchist farm with a home built 100% of recycled materials
where we can get homemade yogurt and where chocolate toasting on the stove
smells delicious on a Sunday afternoon. It is an unemployed permanent resident
on the farm who says, “there are many ways to think about the concept of work
and building things.” She says this while my mind jumps from how my freehand
writing looks like shit to US soldiers veteran suicide rate to the trauma of
war to the rain outside the window to the muddy paws of a dog and how the new
furrow in my brow might be permanent if I don’t relax soon and on and on and
on… and I just feel so exhausted. I fall asleep sitting up while the
conversation carries on around me.
May is shaking it out to live drums at an African dance class, sunny
mornings with strong coffee in the direct sunlight of my bedroom, a flourishing
lavender plant in my urban garden, and visions of writing- novels, poetry,
love. May is reflection on life that seemed to flash before my eyes- everyone,
everywhere, every space and place and thought that came rushing at once. And
how connected we are all. And how at the base of life there is only love… really,
nothing else matters.
There is a full FOR Colombia team trip to Cachipay and all things
work related- work plans and work in the future and analysis and security and
mental health. While there I get a call from an old neighbor in the Peace
Community who tells me that Soila has stolen my old window curtains and made
herself a black cape; she said that La Union needed a super hero since my
departure.
Straight out of the work retreat, I buss, taxi, fly, metro, my way to
D.C. to represent FOR in meetings at Congress, Senate and the State Department.
A lot of hours of travel and then I am sitting in a plaza at the Courthouse
Stop in Arlington, VA, reading my book and waiting on Jeanine on a sunny Spring
day. She arrives and says, “we are so
awesome… this is how people had to do it in the olden days without cell phones-
you plan to meet and then you show up.” And then Jeanine and I are walking the
cleanly swept streets of Arlington, VA as though we had never lived in
Colombia. As though this were normal.
D.C. seems more colorful than I remember. Worms in my stomach have me
additionally exhausted and sleepy. Sleepiness and summer clothes in the U.S.
capitol. We brown bag delicious
home-made sandwich lunches on capitol hill as we trek from the senate to
congress and back again, to the department of state, then to Arlington and back
again. There are trees. Things are clean. Air quality seems better. We take a
long run along the canal, to the Lincoln Memorial. We talk about human rights
in Colombia, about how the US state department should not certify military aid
to Colombia based on human rights violations. We talk about the recent Auto in
favor of the Peace Community and irregular army practices in Uraba. We talk
about the peace negotiations and land restitution and we talk about the
responsibility of the US government in all of these issues. One aide says, “I
really admire you guys for what you do in Colombia, working for human rights.
It seems so much more important than what we do in Congress…” And then Jeanine
says, “It’s all connected, you know, U.S. Congress and human rights in
Colombia.”
D.C. is pigeons and pretty little black birds. It is having to respond
to the question: What is a peace community? D.C. is playing Clue on suede
couches with Jeanine, Austin and Jeanine’s brother. It is a long run from
Arlington to the Lincoln Memorial. It is tennis shoes and three piece suits,
sunshine and feeling safe- the city is so much less in your face than Bogota,
so much less raw. It is cheddar cheese and delicious enchiladas. It is bread. I
meet Jorge Molano there, in the halls of Congress, the third time I had seen
him in a short couple month period- first in Bogota, then in the Peace
Community, then in DC. He speaks about being a human rights lawyer in Colombia.
And while I felt safe in Arlington, he has had a death threat on his life the
same morning we share a meeting space. D.C. is Jeanine, Walker and I running
around like mad from meeting to meeting, a combined FOR and Witness for Peace
effort to take D.C. by storm. It is a whirlwind of political work, aides,
meetings, explanations and asks. It is me leaving them at a metro stop after a
state department meeting as I hopped a plane for mental health leave exactly 6
weeks after the combat in La Union.
And then I land in Denver, picked up by Monica and Joey and driven to
their downtown- another capitol hill- neighborhood. While they work I write
letters and lay face down in the grass in a city park. I enjoy the sun, then
the shade, the wind, the green space of north country urban parks- no concrete
plaza in sight. I watch tightrope walkers and listen to Wilco and let the wind
blow my hair in my face. I write a report from my D.C. extravaganza and then
try to take leave of all things Colombia and human rights. On May 29th,
while I am in Denver, the Colombian government officially apologizes to the
Peace Community for slandering their good name and calling them FARC members. I
miss the public retraction in Bogota while sitting in a park in downtown
Denver. I miss the disappointment of CdP leaders who consider the retraction to
be another attack on their community. (More here for Spanish speakers: http://www.contravia.tv/espanol/capitulos/2013/article/san-jose-de-apartado-ejemplo-de) I write letters to my family and friends
while the girls on the blanket next to me talk about moving home to Minneapolis.
Mom comes in town and we go to the botanical gardens where lilacs and tiger
lilies are in bloom. Dad comes in town and we go to Boulder where memories come
flooding back while we eat at the Tea House and stroll Pearl. There is lots of
crying and next to zero sleeping. I have, once again, quit smoking. There is new
music and delicious food, and quality time with the family. We talk of farms
and communes, of madness and connection to something greater, of poetry and
dance, work, love and the secret vaults of heaven. We take a trip to
Silverthorne and walk in pine forests to waterfalls, crossing streams where
people are fly fishing. We watch Arrested Development and cook tofu. I meet
Moni for a lunch date downtown, and hear pleas from the family to move home for
the first time in many years. I make the
choice to have another homecoming in Guatemala in July, and purchase plane
tickets to make that happen. I think of
the A.T. and skill shares and sustainability and the spaces we move in. I think
of Big Sur. I sit under old elm trees and their sap drips. The wind through the
trees sounds different here, more like a river than rain. I read new magazines
and True Tales of American Life. I eat delicious cheese. Then there is a day
alone with Monica and Joey where we spin poi and bbq, have a laughter-filled photoshoot
in the park and a teary-eyed drop off at the airport. I leave for Miami on a
red eye flight, alone and sad and definitvely thinking I should read Siddhartha
again.
June, she’ll
change her tune
June 2nd I am back in Colombia and back at work. I make the
decision to leave FOR after 2.5 years, and put in my notice for the end of
July- a choice that seems incomplete somehow… I have put so much love and
energy into the project over the past two and a half years and I feel
unfinished or unsettled with the decision to leave, but also like the time has
presented itself for me to move on. This one decision, once made, creates the
necessity to make a lot more- all of a sudden I have no idea what will become
of me by the end of summer. I am working on CVs and cover letters and applying
for jobs for the first time in years. I am organizing life for the chaos of
change because at the end of July I will abruptly be out of work, housing and a
Colombian work visa. Holy shit, overwhelming. In the meantime there are more
people to train and a never-ending list of things to do for our Bogota team as
FOR goes through multiple team transitions at once.
Back in Bogota, I finally make it to the doctor and get rid of the
worms, cysts, parasites and amoebas that have plagued my stomach for the last
long time. The medication brings on a fever and I spend three days puking up
bile in the various bugs’ last attempts to stay alive inside my tummy.
After Emily leaves for vacation in the states, I decide a weekend trip
to Medellin to see some queridos from the CdP is better for me than being alone
in the capitol. So I go to see my old next door neighbor and “grandma” in the
CdP, Gelita. She has been living with a daughter in Medellin for the better
part of the year since her health has been on the decline. I arrive on Friday
afternoon to the arms of my dear Gelita, Ramon (her husband), Cristian and
Ander (two kiddos from the CdP now studying in Medellin) and their extended
family in the city. Friday at midnight Gelita suffers a heart attack and we
spend the rest of the weekend back and forth from the hospital. I once again
find myself accompanying the CdP in time of extreme stress and trauma. I spend
the weekend just trying to help out. I cook with Ander and watch these kids
that once ran up grass streets and lassoed cows now backflipping on railings
over concrete walkways. I open my eyes to the rain on a metal roof in early
morning to see Cristian sleeping like an angel next to me after a long night at
the hospital. In this barrio the vallenato and salsa blare and neighbors can
high five out their windows. Medellin is
in Antioquia, just like San Jose de Apartado, and so combats there still make
the local news. The neighbors ask me what I know about recent combats in their
old stomping grounds. Kites fly over the barrio. Soccer games play on TV. This
barrio, full of people displaced from Uraba seems to be a prime example of the
tropicalization of urban spaces- jungle flowers are potted, parrots are kept in
kitchens. Dotted between ER visits, hospital beds and medical exams are
slumbering babes next to me- eight of us in two beds- and how they make me feel
safe, like a little puppy pile.
June is dancing at sweaty salsa clubs and cooking chai spiced cupcakes.
June is Ander,
wide-eyed in bed when I come home from the hospital at 3am, waiting to
hear word about his grandma. June is running the ciclovia in Bogota and stress
manifesting in various ways in my mind and body. It is strange dreams and
people checking in on me. June is Janice and John Lindsay Poland descending on
Bogota and doubling my social circle. June is the beauty in the breakdown, the beauty
in the transition, the beauty of love. June is news that the avocado tree in
our garden in La Union died- a neighbor there said it was because I broke its
heart by leaving: ‘you know, Gina, that avocado tree only gave fruit the two
seasons you were here. It dried up and died after you left.’ June is dreaming
of people in La Union. It is reconnecting with friends and family. It is an
image on trauma recovery from my friend Claire who says that recovery is a
spiral, not a line, and that some days the trauma will seem closer than others,
but that doesn’t mean the process isn’t moving forward. June is the end of my
journal, the last pages filled with thoughts on transition. The journal holds
two years of thoughts- it’s watermarked from being waterlogged in the Amazon,
it has a doodle from Soila on the front from one day when I watched her
wide-eyed thinking she may take off running with my journal, and it smells of
mold from two years of wear and tear in the jungles of Uraba. June marks two
months since the combat, and has me feeling thankful for the people who helped
me in the most critical of time and who continue to do so as time spirals
forward. June is Emily and I both deciding to leave FOR and simultaneously
overspending our soon to be non-existent budgets on extravagant plans for her
32nd birthday. Oh, how her 30s have taken Colombia by storm: we have
come a long way from that birthday bash in La Union two years ago this month...
dancing with children in a sober rural peace community village. This weekend we
are off to a festival in Huila, to dance in the streets and celebrate her life.
