tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31199892811509377012024-03-13T19:49:12.756-07:00Let's Peace Our World, Together.Working for peace in Colombia and around the world.ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-41571603726099241272013-10-31T15:54:00.000-07:002013-10-31T15:54:19.202-07:00it's life and life only<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
uncle once said that sailing the world made him dream of gardening. I have not
stayed in once place for four weeks straight since February, and I am also
dreaming of roots.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Huila.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Em’s 32<sup>nd</sup> birthday
bash is celebrated at the end of June between the central and eastern
cordilleras at a small town folkloric festival in Huila. we dance vallenato and
see beauty queens perform a folkloric dance so many times in a row that we
ourselves should be competing. A blue agate wind chime hangs in the hotel lobby
and I learn about how musica andina has a harp element. It strikes a chord with
everything I know. We hike barefoot to a waterfall where a morpho butterfly finds
us sitting by rushing water and sunlit pools in Huila’s midafternoon heat. In
town, in the evening, boys run with heart shaped balloons flailing behind them and
girls are all dressed up in frilly dresses. We dance in sweaty rooftop bars. We celebrate
with the whole town at a live vallenato concert in a dusty field, “ponchos
arriba!” and Emily is older and wiser by the end of it all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Guatemala.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Then it is July
and I am in Guatemala for the first time since moving away in 2010. A peace corps van on the side of central park in
Antigua and a gaggle of foreigners spinning poi in central park reminds me how
many Americans are in Guatemala at any given time. (A shit ton.) In Guatemala, I
feel at home. Lee marries Royer on the shores of Lake Atitlan. I marinate in the
colors of the mountains, the beauty of the countryside, the familiar places
simultaneously left behind and brought with me wherever I go, old friends- some of whom have known me a decade. The fruits and
flowers and tropical foliage. The lake. And Xela. Zacapa. Friends. Walking
streets and drinking coffee and juices with friend after run-into friend. Waves
and hugs and chats about communes and gardens, new and old projects, life’s
circles, how we can use our own capacities as we grow and learn. About art for
social change. Travelling takes it out of you- all the normal and the cotidian.
And a homecoming reminds you, of how anything can be normal. My ten days there
are spent in the company of love. In Zacapa, Casey and I discuss the drug war
and I think Teculutan could be San Jose and when a cevicheria next to her house
is called, “Medellin” I decide definitively to move there when I return to
Colombia. Guatemala reminds me what I know, what I don’t know, what I want to
know… what I’m doing about it. Guatemala reminds me the appropriate question
may not be obvious, and that the potential lies in the exquisite imagination.
There is a striking conversation with a deported man in king and queen, the
hugs on every street corner, the catch up with dear friends in every city, the
running along melon fields in Zacapa, the throwing myself into lake Atitlan,
the chicken bussing through the familiar every town and the way moving through
space affects our mindset and connects us to where we are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bogota.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> In Bogota
change is on the horizon outside and always onward inside as I work through my
last few weeks of over packed scheduling and tasks at FOR. Professional wrap up
is pumped with plans for purging my closet and shaking my soul, silent
retreats, meditation and dance. African dance. Salsa dance. Séance Dance. All
dance. Bendy says I am the mistress of change. I dress for the part. New music,
new mindset, and how even though it’s been two months since I left San Jose, I
still compare my every experience to there. I think in the morning how my Bogota
acoustic sunrise compares to La Union’s vallenato accordion at dawn. And this
sort of thing goes on all day. All night.
Come, speak of the future…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
red brick building I watched kick off in construction during the worst days of
my post trauma psychosis is now being plastered over in my last days at FOR. Its
red bricks are about to disappear into another grey building on the Bogota
skyline in Chapinero. I can no longer see through the walls. I think it must be like my
mind-body-soul-heart’s trauma: plastered over with time and therapy, less
visible to an outside eye. And yet, somehow part of the foundation to
everything that will be built on top of it from here on out. From raw and red
to a more blend-in-able grey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">July
is closing out and rituals and promises. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sunny Bogota mornings, rainy afternoons. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Rebuilding
and retaking my sanity, l</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">ove as the opposite of power, love as that
which we fear. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">My
favorite graffiti collective setting up show just downstairs from the FOR
apartment. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Art
for social change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
July is still an acknowledgement of trauma when nightmares have me awake long
before dawn, stretching my lower back silently and slowly as the sun rises. In the early Bogota morn, before the cars and the
sun, you can hear the birds. The birds call to my trauma. They tell it to throw
itself from the window. The birds tell me that babies are ready for trauma
before they are born and that this is all part of the process. And my lower
back relaxes into the stretch. And then I bake early morning pumpkin chai
cupcakes and start to pack. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
August 1st, I leave FOR. The same day, a dear friend of mine leaves earth: Fernando
dies in a fiery plane crash in a cornfield of El Quiche. His plane is seeing
falling out of the sky by farmers in bright traditional dress. And I find out
in real time. And the news jolts my post trauma self into convulsions on the
floor of my Bogota apartment. And when Emily comes home she sits with me while
I cry and blabber on and then she says that life is precious. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Medellin.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Days later, in
a new city, my precious life becomes reading and dancing and a sunnier Medellin
where the surroundings are less harsh. It’s not as hard to breathe in the lower
altitude. It’s not as hard to get to a park in the sunshine. I arrive just in
time for feria de las flores and get to hear all the reasons why Medellin is a
shithole from my socialist anarchist friends and why feria de las flores is a
farse. I also get to dance in the street in free concerts. I get to do all of
these things because I want to. I get to do them all without process of consensus.
I am back to controlling my own life and decision making process. It seems
revolutionary. I see my peace community kiddos
that live in Medellin every Sunday when they come for dinner. And I dance a lot
of salsa. I talk with new people. I walk to new places. I unpack. Regroup.
Read. Write. Breathe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">La Union.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> The same first week
of August, Gelita dies and I am
unexpectedly on my way to accompany another funeral- on my way to La Union for
the first time since I moved away. I am at home in La Union, again. I am collecting
seeds and hugging children, being present at the rainy velorio of my next door
neighbor, eating and talking and lounging in neighbor’s homes, walking through
the jungle of Uraba, sleeping in the first room I ever slept in... in the first
room I couldn’t sleep in back in 2011, at the FOR house. I am witness to the sadness
in slow, quiet crying and to the sadness in loud wailing. I see foggy rolling
clouds and Martin, who appears as if an apparition on the front stoop of the
house. I see what happens when people are heartbroken. I eat zapotes until I
burst and the jungle breathes so much life into me with so many memories that
flood back with the force strong enough to knock me down. I accept
how so much of me is trapped in that space. I am bug bitten to hell in four
days. Babies kick at me from their mother’s bellies. My god daughter laughs in
my arms and I cry out with delight. For the first time I am in the Peace Community
without a FOR shirt on and I am connecting with people as Gina and it feels so
good. It feels like relationships with other human beings should be. And it
seems like such a long time coming in this space that has had such an effect on
the human being that I am. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Medellin.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Back in
Medellin Negro and I walk the park. I feel quieter after a trip to the jungle,
after the deaths of August. I’m amazed at how old I look in photos after just
one year. Moira comes and we read the human rights updates, which includes one
“good” piece of news, however we laugh at the fact that it too has ‘massacre’ in
the title. I resolve not to read any crisis updates for a month.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have the distinct thought I did not die because I am still supposed to create. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Honey
whole wheat bread and the job search in full swing; my life as a period piece. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">No
good and evil in war, only pain. Time as a currency. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
think there are many things I should write before I die. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">USA.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Writing
and homecoming and a hot August in the Midwest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eat
your way to ecstasy at the Clarion Pass Resort. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cermony.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
garden to reap and letters to write. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ginger
ale. Homemade everything. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
trip to Ashland. A trip to Oregon: the great plains and the painted canyon, the
sky so big, Rogue Elk and the Cascade’s pine forest. Skalkaoho pass and a small
family on a farm: Amber, Adam, Ava. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Health
nut western towns. The PCT. A dance studio. Walking after riding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eco-farms
and other simple concepts that are lots of work. Life projects. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Elms,
oaks, maples, pines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Interviews
and applications and the anxiety of the unknown. The anxiety within. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sun
tanning and a cousin’s video. A cousin’s wedding at Grumpy’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Colombia
like an anchor in my heart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Movements
of the body that mirror a post traumatic mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shimmering
leaves and park green spaces. A dog to walk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
where have you been, my darling young one?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ravioli
factory at dad’s. Pool time at mom’s. Oldest friends. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">From
fear strength. Home as an overgrown garden that must be cleaned out every time
I return. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Family and how, in the end, we are not alone in this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
shower for a wedding in Aruba. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Interviews
and rejections and applications entering a second round. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Six
months since the boat crash: I cry silently on every airplane. I tense up in
every car.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Firsts
and lasts and spiraling and overlapping life experiences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">New
kicks and haunted spaces. Our life’s “story” is just a narrative we tell to
ourselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cali.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Back in Colombia, a festival in Cali
calls and after a ten hour bus ride, we are dancing at Petronio Alvarez.
Homemade liquor and homemade Afro-Pacific beats. The drums! The dresses! The
dance circles! Picnics in the park and picnics by the river and nights shaking
our asses in outdoor concert land.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Medellin.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Reorganization
and creation and a discombobulating wind. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">A
starving child in the curtains of my dreams. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">A
lifetime will not be enough to study all I’d like to learn. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Job
search and starting to work here in Medellin part time, to volunteer, t</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">o
read the news again. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Photo
album and jewelry making. Habit building and habit breaking. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mango trees and honey bees and dreams of
visions and sincerity. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
how I need to protect myself. Reading more, writing more, time for breathing,
ciclovia. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
image of a mature tree, full of character and beauty. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Debasing
the soul. Rue the day or seize it. Salsa and Waking the Tiger.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Does
what you’re doing create anything or perform a service?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
wake up one morning in September with the song which was playing when the
combat broke out in my head and my heart is racing. I am sweating. Then I am
stretching and asking myself, “How are you connecting to the earth today?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the darkness of night, on my way to meet Shaka, I feel threatened by nobody and
then look up and remember that the moon will protect me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the park the trees in bow the wind. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cristian
and Ander come for Sunday dinner. Family dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Palms
like quiet castonettes in the breeze. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">How
we learn things. Skill sharing and skill building and doves on my window sill. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sunset
is a nice time to be in the park. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Trips
to the market. No rush. Standing at the sink my thoughts drift to LU. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
dance salsa at dives where people dance like they dance in the Barrio. I dance
in the barrio. I dance in clubs where they dance like it were cuba circa 1950.
Salon. Ballroom. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
take a trip to Santa Elena and hippy dippy land where there is an international
artisit’s retreat. There are artists from around the world and cows and I</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">gladly trade the woes of the world for talking
about clay. Kilns. I compare this retreat to the harsh paramilitary culture
pulsating in the city below and its cultural crackdown on anything alternative.
A day trip to Guatape’s drown town for a pretty view and the dam has me half manic
enjoying the relief paintings on the walls of the homes and half indignant with
the reality that the “lake”/ dam is now where the town used to be. That the
steeple of the church can be seen below a boat.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bogota.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Bogota for a
visa run. The FOR apartment: Jamie and Emily working overtime and me cleaning out my final things. The
move is official. My visa is approved. A slumber party at Liza and Mika’s. Bogota’s
harsher in environment, Medellin’s is perhaps rawer. I journal in the morning
while Liza practices her guitar: metronome journaling while Mika moves sprigs. Wine
induced pasta lunch at Jeanine’s and feeling like there is something about life
that should be slow and deliberate. We four do not work full time at the moment
and it seems like the pace is how it should be. And there are dreams of farm. And
fear is part of it. I buy street art. I carry on my lavender plant from the
Bogota urban garden and walk the streets of Medellin like Natalie Portman at the
end of the Professional. And lavender kicks off the urban garden in Medellin
and I know my thoughts are not so different from the little lavender in a bag. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Carmen.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Back in
Antioquia I attend a protest against the privatization of water sources in a small
town outside of Medellin. I protest multi-nationals reaping the territory,
harvesting money and leaving behind starvation and death. I hate that I am
associated with those companies for the simple act of being foreign, for being
from the world-dominating USA. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Medellin.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> With all of my possessions
in Medellin, I feel settled. As October closes I plant an urban garden. I amp
my craft box for Art as therapy. I attend political conferences and protests
and confront issues of racism and resolve for fearless honesty. I work on my scrap book. As October ends I fill out more applications, have more interviews, more
visions of contradicting and completely different futures. I re-enter the world
after an August of reclusion, a September of hibernation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
is a night of fireworks and vallenatos and urban gun fighting and I have
sleepless night full of nightmares and tears and then I resolve to wake at 4am.
I make coffee and reflect on dreams of young boys in hammocks, dead after
combats in jungles. Of funerals and vigils. Of how kids are killed in the city
too, but I will never have to see them bleed. I watch the sun rise outside my window,
watch the sky turn from black to deep blue while gun shots fire downtown. The
night was for mourning, but the dawn would not be broken; the fighting ended
with the daylight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
mopping the floor one day, I dislodge the water tube from the laundry machine.
When Negro does laundry, our floor floods. We are on all fours with towels,
ringing two inches of water from the tiles, telling stories of every other
flood we’ve ever lived through. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have no foreign friends in Medellin. There will be no Halloween costumes. I see
a colorful kite out the window and think of Supango, of Halloweens and All
Saints Days of my past. And in the Peace
Community, the oldest man goes missing. There are search parties and rumors of
foul play. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wonder, though, if it isn’t more a situation of him turning into a black cat the week of Halloween, and wandering off to die alone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-55158398247694163432013-06-25T16:04:00.001-07:002013-06-25T16:04:21.197-07:00the beauty in the breakdown, the infinite potential in change, and the spiral of recovery<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">April, come she
will<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">May, she will
stay<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now that we are three again, it is back into political work mode around
said combat. It is retelling the events of April 9<sup>th</sup> 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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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 9<sup>th</sup> marks one month since the combat. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">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?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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 29<sup>th</sup>,
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: <a href="http://www.contravia.tv/espanol/capitulos/2013/article/san-jose-de-apartado-ejemplo-de">http://www.contravia.tv/espanol/capitulos/2013/article/san-jose-de-apartado-ejemplo-de</a>)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I make the
choice to have another homecoming in Guatemala in July, and purchase plane
tickets to make that happen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">June, she’ll
change her tune<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">June 2<sup>nd</sup> 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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">June is dancing at sweaty salsa clubs and cooking chai spiced cupcakes.
June is Ander, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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
32<sup>nd</sup> 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.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-4631106945889514032013-05-12T09:29:00.002-07:002013-05-12T09:29:45.048-07:00April Showers...
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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.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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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.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On April 9<sup>th</sup>
(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.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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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 <i>way </i>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.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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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 <i>entire life</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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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 _______.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
April is the spaces we
move in- physically, mentally, spiritually. And April is the trauma of war. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/army-actions-increase-risk-for-for-peace-community/12082</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-7045930136713467702013-05-01T12:30:00.000-07:002013-05-01T12:30:22.724-07:00The show’s greatest theme is not politics, but the artist’s life- not justice, but beauty.
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">February is a moment where everything stopped for no reason. I am in the
cacao and this overwhelming thought occurs…<i>how
did I get here?</i> And then another, also difficult question with more obvious
options for answers: <i>what is the true
color of cacao?</i> (Mauve? Purple? Yellow? Green?) And then a mix of the two-
How did I get here? Purple. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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 <i>he</i> was certain) and
then rode a horse with a double fractured arm for 6 hours through thick mud and
<i>then</i> spent the night waiting for
public transport to come up to San Jose and <i>then,
</i>rode a bumpy jeep to the hospital and waited a whole additional day for a
qualified doctor to arrive and perform the surgery.<i> </i>It blew my mind. The different realities we live on this planet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-56713868091823785452013-01-29T08:38:00.000-08:002013-01-29T08:38:30.630-08:00So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun...
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> “Well kill me if that’s what you came to do-
isn’t that what your guns are for?” An old man practically dares one illegal
armed group to kill him. And a different illegal armed group, on the other side
of the mountain, catches our neighbors as they hike the hill toward home because,
“they just walk so fast it’s impossible to stay ahead of them. We dove in the
bushes and let them pass…” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In December the FOR team is on the
move. First to Arenas Altas where, in the height of the rainy season, the mosquitos
are practically able to bite through our rubber boots (or at least it seems
like they are- after 24 hours everywhere itches all the time anyway). Arenas
Altas, where our acompanado loses his underwear to a waterfall while bathing
and the work group whistles and sings as they chop cacao. Where there is no
light, but a battery powered radio set to a music station that plays tango in
the early morning; where a boy in the work group is breaking in a young horse
and there is an even younger (baby) horse that is too fast to touch. Where men jump
up and down from the low branches of cacao trees and I pass the days sitting in
recently pruned cacao trees and breathing fresh air, listening to songs of
rebellion and revolution and love. Where
we walk through mud in rubber boots, surrounded by flies and sometimes Alejo
sets up his tripod and captures high-tech photos in the half light of the cacao
grove. Where the full moon rises behind the house like a spotlight over the
soccer field of this near abandoned town. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From Arenas we barely stop off to
say hello to our home in La Union before we are off to La Esperanza. There, a
large family of brothers and sisters fish together by hand in the river. And
after so much walking in the rainy humid season, my feet break out in fungi,
which I treat, along with an acompanado who has the same, with salt and lemon
by candlelight in the evenings. In La Esperanza we stay in a new house. We
swing in hammocks and I make morning arepas in the shape of hearts. We hear
about the threats of mining and the threats of armed groups and we talk about
what is to become of the zone in the coming year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On my days off in December, I go to
the beach. Sometimes it’s hard to remember while living in La Union that the
Caribbean is actually only a half hour drive from Apartado. I watch the waves
roll and think about how far away the idea of “December” is while I am in the
tropics. I drink mango juice and swim in the clear water and think of a Raffi
Christmas album and of the holidazzle and of how it blows my mind that in other
parts of the world snow exists. There is drift wood and there are sand crabs,
but I am the only person on the beach in the middle of the work week. I tan a
bit and swim some more and think of all
the things I’ve ever done and all the things I ever will. Then, back to
Apartado to talk to my family over a computer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Alejo leaves for Mexico to
spend Christmas with his family, I find myself alone again in La Union. I enjoy
the cool breezes on the December nights as the rainy season takes its last toll
on town. I eat lots of fresh veggies and read a couple good books. Families make
their life-size anno Viejo dolls of straw and dress them in old clothes to be
burned on the 31<sup>st</sup> at midnight. They set these life-sized tutumo
faced dolls on their front porches and scared toddlers cry as they pass by
beady-eyed strangers staring out from their neighbor’s homes. I harvest a HUGE
cucumber from the garden and spend a lot of time trying to revive the tomatos
from the first half of the month when they were abandoned. I visit my neighbors
and the trees by the kiosks and watch my neighbors make honey from suger cane.
I water plants and wash sheets. I eat corn on the cob (no point in explaining
that we eat this in the summer time in Minnesota) and bunuelos and got caught
in the rain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And then Emily comes for the week of
Christmas and we laugh about our lives. When the heat was is hot and the
barometric pressure so high that there is nothing for the sky to do but
downpour, Emily runs from one house to the other, bursts into the kitchen and
says in a near yell (both from exasperation and to be heard over the rain on
the tin roof), “THANK GOD IT STARTED RAINING!” My thought exactly. We tan
together on the secadora. We bake Christmas cookies, which the children cut in
the shapes of machetes, horses, pigs, and a few (prompted) pine trees and
hearts and stars. We make homemade frosting and for my lack of color-wheel
foresight, we don’t use white sugar. The frosting colors end up intended color
+ a mix of brownish yellow (thanks,
sugar); bright blue, for example, becomes industrial grey. And thus, there is
an industrial grey stovetop fried machete Christmas cookie. You know, the
classic holiday favorites. We decorate our campo Christmas cookies despite the
unfortunate color shemes and eat so much frosting that we and every child in LU
have parasites and in the end, when even looking at the sugar gives me a
headache, we let a nearby horse lick the superfluous frosting from the back of
Emily’s hand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On the 24<sup>th</sup> the community
kills a cow and we dance the night away in the kiosk. My favorite image of that
night: two women dozed off on the stomach of the anno Viejo sitting between
them on the porch of their house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After an all-night dance, there is a
Christmas day hike (Good Morning, FOR!). We are sent to Arenas Altas. There is no
Christmas music, nor madness shopping sprees nor gift giving. There is no
Santa, no snow, no elf, no reindeer
(although the Christmas cookie horse prolly could have doubled if the red
frosting hadn’t been poo-brown). There is a near-abandoned war zone town from
which we draft our Gina and Emily Christmas card: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dear family,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Merry Christmas. We are in a
deserted ghost town in the war zone of Colombia for Christmas. There is no
phone signal, don’t bother trying to call. We will be sitting in (biting)-ant-infested
jungle trees watching men plant beans and chasing baby horses for the foreseeable
future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Love,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gina and Emily<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In Arenas we walk down the hill to
shit and up the hill to watch men plant beans. The hills are a deep jungle
green (at this time of year the color really is like the Crayola pack Jungle
Green that I remember from elementary school) and the river was rushing high
(in a last attempt to drown everything before dry season). We talk about the
Midwest (Emily if from Milwaukee) and New Years Resolutions and the world bank
trying to buy the forest so that the campesinos don’t work it. (Still
breathing? Thank a tree.) We slept in
hammocks and eat beans and rice and have daily massage hour. And then we walk
back down the hill to our respective homes (me, LU and she, Bogota). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And just like that, Emily is gone.
LU has baby baptisms and I become a godmother- bippityboppityboo. The Lord’s prayer
is sung to the tune of “The Sound of Silence” and I think about subway walls
and tenement halls with a baptismal candle burning in my hand. Emily leaves me
a Sun magazine and I cherish ever paragraph. The moon is full and I don’t sleep
for a couple nights. I walk the streets in the late night and try to understand
how there are so many stars on a full moon and the stars just twinkle back in
conspiracy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On the 31<sup>st</sup> I awoke at
6am and the pig is already dead. It is a pig the size of a horse and it will be
eaten all evening, all night and in the early morning of January 1, 2013. Music
blares from the kiosk all afternoon and we start dancing (ahem, “we” being me
and one partner) at 7pm and then we (all of the town) dance until 8am. My shirt
is wet with sweat and for once, so is everyone else’s and the breeze through
the kiosk keet everyone vallenatoing away 2012. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> At midnight the music is turned off and all of
the anno viejos are brought to be burned. They go up in glorious flames and the
moon glows ever so beautifully far above the fire and behind a thin veil of
clouds. Everyone stands silently and watches the fire. Some cry, some hug, they
all seem to let go what was in 2012, to welcome the new year. Then everyone
walks around hugging everyone and wishing them a happy new year and then the
music comes on again and we dance some more. And the pig keeps coming in waves
of fried meat, always accompanied by another campo Christmas dish. In the early
morning light those who went to bed creep back out of their houses to laugh at
the all-nighters still boogy-ing away on the dance floor and help re-fry the
remaining pig. All day on the 1<sup>st</sup> the music still blasts from the
kiosk, although most of the dancers sleep away the day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">December is the soft light of the
early mornings and the thundering wings of hummingbirds that fly into the house
to visit me. It is the baptism of a baby princess in a blue dress- oils and
candles and crosses and love. December is the resolution to write 30 poems in
my 30<sup>th</sup> year. It is the cry of a baby and the crackle of a stove, a
white and gold rooster doing a dance in the early morning light and the morning
light itself, which looks like honey falling down on the sparkling puddles. A
special edition of Semana comes out, all about the peace process and I read it
while swaying in my hammock bed. A Colombian student somewhere says, “Killing
someone to defend an ideal isn’t defending an ideal- it’s killing someone.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">The days stay darker in the morning
and in the pre-dawn darkness there is a song on the radio that sounds like it’s
being played on a record player and how it has the ability to haunt me all day.
And it is an acute pang of sadness as the anno viejos go up in flames at
midnight on the 31</span><sup style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">st</sup><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> and I realize that 2012 is never to be again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On January second there is no music
blasting from the kiosk. 2013 comes softly. It sinks and settles around LU like
a fog while the villagers sleep off two days of welcoming parties. The dry
season, however, comes with a bang. From one day to the next, the rain is gone.
Just like 2012, completely and utterly lost. And in its place there is a HEAT
WAVE. I’m talking about the kind of heat that scares me to walk out into the
sun because I can’t help but think of becoming a random case of spontaneous combustion.
The kind of heat where I don’t even wanna touch myself because I stick with my
own sweat. Gross. On the upside, the mushrooms on my feet dry out overnight
(hurrah!) and (when realizing I will be in LU for a few more months) I finally
cave and buy myself a fan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alejo comes home and we are sent to
Mulatos. Beautiful Mulatos, my favorite (yes, I pick favorites) peace community
village outside of La Union. In Mulatos the Colombian government started aerial
fumigating coca crops (Happy New Year, Uraba!) and so we go to verify how they
actually aerial spray all of the food crops of the peace community as well.
Aerial fumigations have been protested for years by human rights organizations
as they are neither cost nor eradication effective and on top of that, they
kill food crops, contaminate water sources, do irreversible damage to the
forests and air and cause sickness and death to the human population. This is
the first case of aerial fumigation around the Peace Community (although the
method has been a key part of Plan Colombia in other parts of the country since
the 1990s). We saw the planes spraying and the damage down to the jungle. We
saw the dried up crops and spoke with <i>campesinos</i>
from the fumigated areas. I come back to LU even more (is that possible?)
disgusted with U.S. policy in Colombia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I read El Hablador and it pumps the
already tangible feeling of magic that abounds in these jungles. And it makes
me think of beauty because it has beautiful images of how people are. And how
communities are. And it makes me think of In Watermelon Sugar, but I can’t
quite remember why. Then I read a memoir of an ex-pat Australian living in
Amsterdam and am so removed from this jungle, laughing at silly things that
ex-pats do abroad that they would (prolly?) never do at home. And for being
able to read both of those books and for their different effects on my mind, I
start of 2013 feeling so very grateful that I can read. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe cross-culturally a change in
the calendar year makes people reflect. Here neighbors seemed to be telling me
more about their youth- of running from armed men time and time again. They
seemed to be telling me more about their community history. And when there is a
gunshot wound, they reflect on all the incredible gun shot wounds they have
seen. This leads to more reflection on who lives, who dies and who was hunted
down later. Their war stories are actually just their life stories. And in the
first part of 2013, I seem to hear a lot about their lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">January is standing accidently on a fire
ant hill and not realizing until it is way too late. It is leaf cutter ants
marching over my stomach when I fall asleep at the kiosk and the raspberry
suckers purchased in Apartado which have everybody asking what the flavor is
supposed to be. January is community work days with sweeping views and sharing
a blanket with a little girl in braids in the shade of a guava tree. It is how
small we are against a natural jungle landscape, and how we should remember
that. We are so small, so insignificant. January is laying on my back watching
spiders spin their webs, watching fireflies blink in the night, watching starts
twinkle in their glorious dry season spreads across the sky. It is the smooth,
grooved black rocks at the river’s edge-
the best way to cool down when just walking up the street in this heat
takes incredible effort. January is speaking with my family after the holidays
and missing them. It is losing all of my photos from the Fall in the Peace
Community to a technological error on an Apartado computer. January is jumping
into the posa in the last weeks of its depth before the river dries up and the
swimming hole is no more and then the same river has my neighbors floating face
down in shallow river waters, machetes high, ready to impale any fish daring
enough to swim past. It is snakes on paths and flowers of all colors peeking
out of deeps greens. January is days staying lighter visibly longer and the
sunsets turning from a fuscia pink to to a firey orange. It is the oldest man
in LU walking down the street hacking up tobacco and it is military boot tracks
over peace community terrain. January is learning to lossoe like a real live
cowgirl and then I bothering everything from fence posts to baby pigs to
unassuming neighbors with my new skill. Janurary is yellow children suffering
helatitis and all of the papayas in town ripening at the same time. It is Gina
in front of her new fan with arms hanging
like a scarecrow, feet shoulder width apart. January is loud, low flying
fumigation planes spraying poisons across the sky, it is sick children and sick
farm workers, who breathe the air full of chemicals. It is blue and yellow and
read birds and a woodpecker going to town on the side of the house way before
dawn. It is children screaming and children running and children playing hide
and seek and dominoes and cards. January is bombs and combats and sometimes
confusing a particularly loud woodpecker in the canyon for machine gun fire
(whew). It is milking cows and making hot chocolate. January is preparing for meetings
with the military and meetings with the state entities and walking dusty paths
and evening soccer matches in the center of town. It is horses running in herds at full speed
through town and all of our neighbors throwing themselves and their children
out of the way. It is the jungle breaking out in birdsong as the sunrises and
Sapa howling with her kills in the night. January is making honey, and making
sugar and making plans for what the rest of the year will bring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-5802529043211136612012-12-10T06:05:00.002-08:002012-12-10T06:05:43.427-08:00Monthly Update NovemberHere is an article I wrote for out monthly update aboput the mid-November combat:<br />
<br />
http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/even-those-who-chose-peace-suffer-war-zone/11456ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-89702328500602151912012-11-26T06:17:00.001-08:002012-11-26T06:17:16.386-08:00always back to the rain...
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the beginning of October, I left the war zone for
Bogota (again) and the team retreat where talked of the future. It was a week
of r and r from the intense sun of Uraba and a week to get my body back in
order after the hard fall. Liza says maybe the back and forth will get easier
the more I do it. She read poetry from The Sun Magazine. In Bogota I ate a
breakfast bagel and nurtured a wandering mind. I dreamt at night and had visions
of Ireland and of small town somewhere. I thought about paradigm shifts in my
personal life and in the world. I spent
a lot of time with the team. We talked of the different stages of resistance
and of survival and of grief and action. We talked about our nation of
medication that doesn’t feel the indignation of what is happening in the world.
The nation that is numbed to what our lifestyle creates for others and
ourselves. A nation on medication that doesn’t think about renovation, doesn’t
have time for contemplation. Individuals with no rage for the wars and violence
and injustice around the world. Individuals that back the war in Colombia so
that the USA can maintain a culture pumped full of panic medication when
really, sometimes you gotta think anyone that is <i>not panicking</i> about the state of our world has no pulse. We talked
of trauma survivor workshops and community building. We talked about how dreams
are our reality and how from our fear comes our power. And we worked. A lot.
And then I came home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She was washing clothes and I was
holding her baby as the rain came across the canyon. It was pouring when the
lightening came crashing, 500 yards away and stuck a tree, blowing it up in
crackling flames. We both dove to the ground as the cows came running across
the plain. I thought it was combat at first. After the moment calmed she
laughed and said, “your lucky I didn’t end up on your shoulders.” It was so
loud, that crashing lightening. And a few days later that tall old tree died
and fell to the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Searching through my email one day
in Apartado, I accidently found an old document from when I applied to my study
abroad program. The last question was: why do you want to do this program? I
responded: Because every moment is as substantial as it is fleeting. I was 20.
When I read it I could picture where I was when I wrote it. Now I am 30 and I
wonder what I write now that I will reflect on again when I am 40.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">October in the war zone was walking
along the riverbed as it rose and fell in the oncoming raining season… at first
the rains come lightly. It was visions of Apartado on my way through several
times, of boys rolling each other in tires and women sauntering with decorative
umbrellas in the mid-day heat. It was children throwing rocks at the liquor trucks
as they dropped off beer in poor neighborhoods and yelling, “bad bad bad!”at
the men unloading it. October was
planting pumpkins and forgetting about Halloween, but laughing to myself that
nobody here will know jack-o-lanterns are out of season when we carve them in
January. October was a wasted dead bug in a web from which the spider had
already moved on. My neighbor telling me that if I promise to stay forever she
will help me build a house and donate a cow to me. October was combats and
power outages and the potent smell of manderine trees in the jungle. It was the
cotton tips of sugarcane ready to be cut. It was cutting and carrying sugarcane
to be made into honey. It was the rain storm that damaged the water tubing and
had us bathing in the ever rising river. It was baking cakes and a hummingbird
that flew through my window and fluttered in my face for a moment before flying
away, and then the pit that its absence left in my stomach. It was pouring
runny honey into molding blocks in the fuscia sunset and borrowing a machete to
cut the grass. It was Charlotte trying to lift my bag before we walked home and
saying, “well, that’s a challenge.” October was citrus canker sores. It was
late night working meetings with Charlotte and eating a manderine alone in the
mid-night darkness and seeing nothing, hearing no one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One morning in October I was half
dreaming in the early morning hours when a neighbor came to tap on my window.
And then I was not dreaming at all as a bomb exploded and I realized that the
neighbor tapping on my window in my dream was actually the sound of machine gun
fire on the far side of the hill. I backflipped outta bed and into the street
where my neighbors were already gathered listening to the combat. We talked
about where it was as I came to and my neighbor laughed at me and said, “pretty
good alarm clock, eh?”and then my other neighbor said, “as long as I’m up I may
as well go see if Jesusa made arepas for breakfast.” The combat didn’t last
long, but it was quite loud. After the combat the helicopters flew low all day
long and they were even louder, circling overhead. Later a neighbor told me that her
three-year-old daughter was scared. She said she understood why, with all that
noise but that she told her daughter not to let those noises scare her, since
those are the noises of the war and they live in a war zone. I was caught
thinking about my dream- in every other place I have other lived it would have
been reversed- I would have been dreaming of machine gun fire to awake to the gentle
reality that a neighbor had come to visit. Here I dream of someone taping at my
window to wake up to the reality of war.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A conversation with a two year old:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Did your dad die?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Did your mom die? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Well then, where are they? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They live very far away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In Medellin? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even further. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Further than Medellin? Like… on the
moon? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Just about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I slice myself on barbed wire and
think about the last time I had a tetanus shot. It was such a clean cut that
didn’t feel anything until the blood started dripping. Then it spent the entire
month of November not healing in the tropical climate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">November brought the arrival of my
new co-worker, Alejandro from Mexico. He arrives to a large poisonous scorpion
in his shower. He arrives to rainy season’s coral sunrises and fuscia sunsets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the fifth grade graduation (the
highest grade in our village) the professor talks about how the kids should
keep studying. The kids put on their gowns and walk across the stage and
receive their diplomas. I try not to tear up. It will be the end of formal
education for many of them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When the rumors start circulating
that a young man left to join the FARC, one of his friends comes to me and
says, “if this is true, we will be having another funeral in a matter of weeks.
There will be another mother crying and another headstone in the
cemetery." When the young man in question returned after several days
away, I could not have been more happy to see anyone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">November was removing beans from
their shells, and eating snap peas from the garden. There was a clear night sky
in the middle of a rainy week and a sliver moon emerged with the full outline
behind it’s penumbra. November was
building houses and planting seeds, it was moonless darkness on rainy nights
and the coral onset of the sunrise. November was Red velvet cake on a homemade
oven, then chocolate almond cake on a homemade oven and then banana cake on a
homemade oven… all practicing my open flame culinary skills for my 30th
birthday. November was the arrival of a package from Lee with all sorts of goodies
and an unforeseen disaster in the garden when I accidently weighed too much and
caused one of the arms of the papaya tree to come crashing down on the tomato
and pepper plants. It was the rainy season in full force- with rushing rivers
and wet water filled boots from the crossings we make on our way down to town.
November was hanging off of the back of jeeps and walking home through swarms
of butterflies. It was the one year anniversary of Ottoniel's death and
planting flowers at his gravesite as the sun set. November brought the election
of Obama, but my absentee ballot arrived a day too late to be sent back.
November is passion fruit juice and cockroaches in the computer. It is me
walking in Apartado as the Christmas decorations come out and feeling a pang of
nostalgia and sadness in knowing I won’t be going home for the holidays. The
week of my birthday brings a crisp moon in the western sky that night after
night outdoes the beauty of the tropical sunset on the other horizon. People
say the full moon makes Soila even crazier. Sapa is so pregnant she can barely
fit through the bars on my window and is hungry 100% of the time. She chews my
pen when I try to write and sits on the magazine if I try to read. She needs
attention, apparently. November is heavy downpours and knee deep mud. It is hot
and humid air before the rains and wispy clouds in the blue sky after. It is
the reflection of golden sunsets in the small puddles all the way down the
street. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The local municipality celebrates
“farmer’s day” and floods San Jose with people who actually live in poor
neighborhoods of Apartado. They tape the military handing out rice and oil to
the “farmers” and they bring in at least ten times the amount of people that
actually live in the war ravened town by the bus loads. It is eerie and strange
as I walk through town on my way to a meeting. A neighbor says to me, “how
embarrassing that people in other parts of the country watch this on TV and buy
that propaganda. How embarrassing to think farmer’s aren’t capable of
cultivating rice… how sad for Colombia that there are people poor enough in
Apartado to be bought by a publicity stint for a kilo of rice and some oil…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A nearby combat between paramilitary
and the FARC causes all kinds of chaos mid-month. It is long and severe and
many young men die. On a quiet night with no light, a casket is built in the
central kiosk. Women and children come to my house and we drink hot chocolate
in candlelight and wait for the men to come back with the body for burial. We
drink hot chocolate to the sounds of saws and hammers and nails. Later a
neighbor says she saw one of the wounded before he died, as they were trying to
get him to the hospital. He was already near the end and she looked down at him
crying and said, “I never thought I would see this boy like this…”and she
related how he silently had tears rolling out of his closed eyes at hearing her
voice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ivan Marquez is on the cover of the
local Semana magazine and an old man here tells me how he met the FARC
commander twice about twenty years ago- once in San Jose and once in La
Esperanza. This month the FARC are seen around in larger numbers, and they go
on the heavy offensive. November 20<sup>th</sup> brought the swelling of peace
negotiations between the government and the FARC and a unilateral ceasefire,
but it’s hard to believe the fighting will cease in Uraba.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I turned thirty on a sunny morning
and went walking in the jungle to find wood to cook rice milk over an open
flame. I turned thirty on a rainy afternoon spent decorating four cakes that I
baked with home made pink frosting. I turned 30 on a humid evening and I
walked house to house through the mud reminding people of their utterly
important responsibility to come dance with me (rain or shine). I turned thirty
on a starry night; people dressed up
despite the mud and came to the center of town and ate rice milk and cake and
danced with me. I danced vallenato until midnight, in rubber boots, with my
neighbors who get up at 5am for work. I turned 30 in a rural peace community village
in the middle of the war zone and there was nothing else to do but dance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-45315512018381444062012-10-03T12:12:00.001-07:002012-10-03T12:12:10.523-07:00September in the War Zone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here is a FOR post for our Latin American Monthly Update that I wrote about being back in the Peace Community for the third time this month:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/life-war-go/11140">http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/life-war-go/11140</a></div>
ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-82794995222203723202012-08-27T11:21:00.001-07:002012-08-27T11:21:48.300-07:00URGENT ACTION FOR PEACE COMMUNITY!please take the time to do this important action to support the peace community. pretty please.<br />
xoxo<br />
g<br />
<br />
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11353ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-6863193954957267032012-08-02T08:22:00.001-07:002012-08-02T08:22:37.223-07:00July's Days of Independence<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br />
<span style="background: white;">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.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">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.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I started smoking again. And then I quit, again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-54265764425393164092012-06-29T13:34:00.001-07:002012-06-29T13:34:59.820-07:00Bloggin' About June<style>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lila Downs came
to a historical downtown theatre. Lila danced cumbia, merengue, ranchera and flamenco
steps to her own voice. She was a vision in purple, complimenting her flowing
dresses and tightly bodiced top with shawls and hats and <i>huipiles</i>, depending on the style of the song she sang- some <i>quincinera</i>, gypsy, lizard, trojan
princess. Liza, Mika and I sat in the balcony; we leaned in. Lila’s Mexican
accent and <i>modismos</i> has me missing
Central America. Her song interlude chitchats about violence and indigenous
languages were, in and of themselves, a complimentary combination package of <i>pecados</i> and <i>milagros</i>. Walking downtown in the blistering wind on the way home
from her concert, I felt so alive and reminded of all the things that happen in
a city every single night. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lately I have
been thinking a lot about living 100% in accordance with one’s beliefs. And the
honesty that takes. And how many levels there are to that idea. And both
theoretically and in practice (ahem)… what would that even <i>look</i> like? I have been thinking about concrete actions like shopping
according to ones ethics to not blindly benefit a capitalistic system and working
according to ones’ beliefs to ensure that individual income is not at the
expense of ideals. I have been thinking about making personal decisions to
benefit the whole. I have also had lots of conversations about the whole mess
of an idea of living according to one’s beliefs. In my case, how it is that I will
continue to grow and not sacrifice my idealism (as so many have told me I would
eventually) or “grow up” to be a “functioning member of society”, but rather to
cradle that idealism and continuously challenge the injustices of society. To
not blame yearning for a safer, gentler society in retrospect on innocence and
young age, but rather embrace that yearning and nourish it all through life-
giving it fuel with more experience. To be able to be realistic and idealistic-
to see all of the harsh realities of the world and be willing to put all the
energy it takes to make them better. I have been thinking a lot about all of
this. I have come to very few conclusions… rather more ideas. I suppose that is
ok. The journal my grandma gave me last year has an Emerson quote on the
inside: Thoughts are the seeds of actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">June has many
Monday holidays making for several long weekends. Of course, as the Bogota FOR
team, one of us always has to be on call. Emily went out of town for a weekend
and I found myself suddenly on call and sola. I simultaneously enjoyed time
alone and had separation anxiety from Emily. I baked potpies and ran the
ciclovia. I danced salsa and went to a concert of Liza and Mika’s. I wrote a
lot. I read a lot. I bought my first new pair of ballet shoes in ten years. I
worked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The first week of
June had the whole team in Bogota for our mental health day. Those are nice.
Particularly because our work-load and rate has been in high-gear all month.
Here are some highlights: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">On June 14<sup>th</sup>
FOR, along with 7 other international protective accompaniment organizations, hosted
a forum and cocktail to celebrate FOR’s 10 years in Colombia and demonstrate
why our work is still necessary in the current context of the Santos
government. Picture amazing speeches by individuals from the Colombian state, human
rights sector, diplomatic corps and communities in resistance depicting the
importance of international accompaniment and their hope for peace to a full
conference room. Picture photos on the wall representing all eight
accompaniment organizations and the work they do in various regions country.
(Diplomatic rep: “you guys are <i>really out
there</i>!”) Picture Gina, in formal wear, drinking wine and talking with state
officials about why massacres are bad. Life as performance art?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The third week of
June our second issue of the popular education series, “Demilitarizing Life and
Land,” went to press. It was all about the War on Drugs and has taken up a lot
of my time over the last months. I am excited to see it all pretty and printed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two
representatives from the Peace Community came to Bogota for a string of
meetings and political work. Emily and I met up with them and ate mangoes and
talked about travel and life and Uraba. It was good to hug them. Sometimes
Uraba feels so very far away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There was a sentencing
on the 2005 massacre against the CdP. Susana’s article here:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/limited-ruling-paves-way-for-international-criminal-court/10657">http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/limited-ruling-paves-way-for-international-criminal-court/10657</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eduar Lancheros,
a key advisor to the Peace Community, died of cancer this week. The team in the
Peace Community is currently participating in his vigil and funeral. He will
permanently rest in the Peace Community vereda of LH. Spanish speakers can read
about his life in the lovely obituary from Justicia y Paz here: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://justiciaypazcolombia.com/Eduar-Lancheros">http://justiciaypazcolombia.com/Eduar-Lancheros</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">My co-worker Elisabeth is from Austria. She writes in German. This month she wrote for our monthly update in English and now I want her to go ahead and translate every blog she has ever written. As an additional tidbit about her co-existence with animals, the cat gave birth in her bed this week:</span></div>
<a href="http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/giraffes-dragons/10653%20">http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/giraffes-dragons/10653 </a><br /><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mid-month,
swimming against the undertow in a sea of work, I decided I seriously needed a
break. I needed to <i>leave</i> Bogota. I
needed to <i>leave</i> the emergency phone
behind and <i>not</i> deal with anything
work for at least <i>one</i> <i>weekend</i>. I was beginning to freak out
about this. As if to reaffirm the truth that the universe does indeed conspire
for the dreamer, a farm boy appeared in my urban life and invited me out to the
campo for the weekend. And as if to remind myself that people are good, I took
the invitation from this near stranger and headed out to his farm house seven
hours west of Bogota. I spent the weekend looking at cows and moving horses
from one pasture to the next. I watched this family in their process of building
a house out of bamboo (by hand) and was reminded of my Aunt Mary Lu in Big Sur.
I saw men chop wood with machetes, framed by rolling green hills and the blue
ridge of the mountains. I spent lazy mornings staring out at vast views
stretching toward Cauca and el Choco while drinking hot chocolate. In the
evening, I heard rolling thunder and Manuel told me sometimes you can hear the
combats all the way from el Choco. <span> </span>I sorted avocados and picked guavas from trees. I sat in the
sun, at the river’s edge and smelled the forest. I decided Pereira smells like
summer. An old man who lives on the finca told us stories at dusk of ghosts and
gnomes and apparitions. He told us of a panther that killed cows and men when
it roamed these hills and jungle thirty years ago. I slept under a mosquito net
and sweat on a long walk through rolling green pastures with sweeping mountain
views. I listened to frogs and chickens and stared wide-eyed at the stars. It
was lovely and just what a Gina needed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Liza turned 35.
As the birthday girl, she hosted Birthday Bingo. (She also won the first round
(rigged, obviously) and with it, a Rubik’s cube.) Everyone brought a gift for
birthday bingo prizes and they were cool and eclectic, just like the people who
brought them. Mika made the most awesome of deserts. I was thrilled to
celebrate with them in their beautiful home, with their wonderful friends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Emily turned 31. We
talked about our ability to remember “a year ago today” so clearly on our
birthday. How we can remember, on this specific day, where we were and what we
did every single year of our lives. And how hard this is to do for any other
day. We talked about how far we have come from a year ago today- celebrating
her 30<sup>th</sup> birthday in the Peace Community over empanadas and a large
contingency of children under the age of seven. This year we walked the city
and had lunch on a half sleety, half sunny day. We strolled through the Parque
Nacional and enjoyed a few Bogota Beers. It was a great day. We decided she
should go ahead and have a birthday everyday. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">June was dancing
salsa. Dancing salsa in a studio, ripping up my feet before I bought some
shoes. It was dancing salsa in an underground club on a deserted sketchy street
where we were pleasantly surprised with badass salsa dancers wearing keds. It
was dancing salsa in a famous, sweaty salsa club on a Thursday night in formal
wear, celebrating the success of our event. June was strolling on Saturdays and
stopping into a <i>vivero</i> near my house to
be among plants in my treeless neighborhood; to smell jungle life. It was browsing
through bookstores and smiling at English titles. June was the smell of Emily’s
(urban garden grown!) rosemary and onion bread baking in our oven, and her
black bean chocolate brownies (an new favorite). June was reconnecting with friends
in the capital and abroad, both celebrating and sending birthday wishes. June
was David’s arrival to the team with English literature in tow, lavendar sprigs
in my urban garden, running the ciclovia, getting outta town and celebrating
work well done. June was the loss of light when we didn’t pay our energy bill-
cold showers and no stove which reminded us of campo living conditions. June
brought the longest game of cut-throat I have ever played. We headed to a pool
hall after work and, as players pool, we scratched so many times that we had
three rounds in one. June was the first month of summer, which we tend to
forget while living abroad, but with every flip of the calendar I am closer to
my August trip home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This coming long
weekend brings July. It also brings Rock al Parque (biggest rock fest in Latin
America, right here in Bogota) and PRIDE. Picture me in fake eyelashes and
rainbow tights, covered in glitter, grand jete-ing down the street in a
fabulous parade. Picture me busting a move in a crowd of manic concert goers.
All of my visions for this weekend have me cracking a smile, in overt
conspiracy with the future.</span></div>
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<br /></div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-80610370480127825302012-05-31T08:49:00.000-07:002012-05-31T08:52:36.439-07:00Oh Me, Oh MAY!<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">May was my first full month in Bogota, and it sure was eventful…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">May Day, a public holiday in Colombia (in association with International
Workers Day, not the Celtic calendar holiday complete with may pole dances and baskets), traditionally
sees the most violent protests in Bogota. Riot police abound. Colombia is still
the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist, and this is the
day of the year they take to the streets in mass. I woke up that day and chose
to take a long peaceful run towards the north, leaving the rest of my co-workers to
participate in the protests downtown. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All sorts of groups outside of unions march in the May Day protest. One
that certainly deserves mention this year is the Marcha Patriotica, which is
the new emerging leftist party in Colombia. The Marcha Patriotica draws
connotation to the Union Patriotica, (Fastest Colombian history lesson ever: UP
was the FARC-backed communist political party during the last peace
negotiations. After the negotiations, with the UP as the official political
party, the government systematically killed UP members, leaders and elected
officials. Peace failed. FARC returned to current military tactic.) And while
rumors of peace negotiations abound in the Colombian media, there are several media
reactions to this new emerging party. 1.)
Why would we (the left) set ourselves up for another repetition of what
happened with the UP? 2.) Is the FARC actually backing the MP (clearly in
political ideology that would make sense, but as compared to the UP which was <i>created</i> by the FARC, the MP is a
separate political party). Those on the right tend to equate the two, clearly
dangerous for non-FARC members who are participating in legal leftist politics
(already dangerous in Colombia, obvious by the need for our accompaniment). 3.)
How will this party be different from other parties on the left? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A few things are clear: this new party mobilizes
groups from outside of the capital. In their march last month, it is estimated
that 80,000 participated, the grand majority travelling in from other regions
and rural parts of the country. According to a conference I attended yesterday,
regional leaders and organizers of the party have been killed since that march
(their first mass public demonstration). For good or danger, they have
certainly grabbed the nation’s attention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Day and Tippy come to town with a full extra suitcase of North Country
contraband. I am still eating fine cheese daily and thrilled about it. We
bummed around the historical downtown and hit the national museum. We hiked
Monseratte and went shopping. We fined dined and market shopped, caught up on
the life and times and chillaxed. It was lovely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">On May 15<sup>th</sup>, the Colombian- USA Free
Trade Agreement went into effect with a mid-night shipment of flowers out of
Colombia’s port in Cartagena. The port, at midnight, was full of flag-waving
Colombian children. As the BBC reported, </span>“<i><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt;">The accord, signed during President George W
Bush's administration, was opposed by US labor groups, who feared job losses. Many
Democratic members of Congress argued that it should not be approved until they
were satisfied Colombia had done enough to stop violence against union organizers.
There was also opposition from Colombian trade unions, who expressed concern
about whether the country was developed enough to compete. Urging Congress to
ratify the deal, the Obama administration warned that further delay would cost
the US jobs and the chance to boost exports.”</span></i><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt;"> Needless to say, after
living in Guatemala straight through CAFTA implementation, my heart sank a
little bit on the morning of May 15<sup>th</sup>. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then, also on the morning of
May 15<sup>th</sup>, my heart jumped. A bomb exploded about 10 blocks from our
apartment, shaking northern Bogota. While questions about who was behind the
bomb still go unanswered, there is no doubt that the day chosen was symbolic.
As an organizer who shares our office space lamented to me a couple weeks later
over lunch: “we had a whole press conference about the negative consequences of
the FTA and with that bomb, it was just decided that the news wouldn’t cover
the FTA at all”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This was the first bomb attack
Bogota has seen in 10 years, and perhaps challenged the recent cover of Time
magazine granted to President Santos. It certainly reminded the inhabitants of
the capital (if not the world over) that there is still a very real and very
dirty war going on in this country. Additionally, it made all of our team
question our security analysis. While we are constantly aware of bombs and
combats in the war zone, the hard truth of the matter is that this particular
bomb exploded closer to our home than any of the ones we heard or saw in Uraba.
Eek. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In an even MORE symbolic relevance
to the bomb: May 15<sup>th</sup> is International Conscientious Objectors day.
With such rampant violence in this war torn country, I was thankful to have a
string of meetings with the Conscientious Objector group who we accompany here
in the capital. The peace movement is really the only way, says I.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We read a lot of news. A friend at Witness for Peace drew my attention
to an extremely disturbing Trident gum advertisement in Colombia’s weekly political
magazine, <i>Semana</i>. This ad has me currently
writing my first personal consumer complaint letter to a corporation in years.
The basic concept is that Trident gum produces healthy smiles, which, in turn,
provoke other smiles. The image is two individuals hugging and smiling over
trident gum. Sounds fine, until you take a closer look and see that the
individuals are 1.) a US Border Patrol agent and 2.) a Latino (presumably illegal)
immigrant. Apparently Trident hasn’t considered the implications of making
light of the current US-Mexican border situation, but I am taking it upon myself
to make them consider said implications. I read this particular issue of <i>Semana</i> the same week I received No More
Deaths (NGO documenting Border Patrol abuses of migrants at the AZ-Mexico
border) newsletter. And BAM!: Complaint letter content filled. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have now officially and deliberately stopped reading my crisis alerts
from parts of the world outside of the Americas. I feel a threshold. Guatemalan
news alone breaks my heart everyday and Colombian news is a required part of my
job. And that is only the tip of the Americas iceberg. Sometimes it all seems
so overwhelming, even though peace seems so obvious. And then a friend sends me
this uncited quote with the caption ‘why do we do the work we do?’:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“It’s
impossible,” says pride.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“It’s risky,”
says experience.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“It’s pointless,”
says reason.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Give it a try,”
whispers the heart.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lee comes to town! While she works for the IRC and much of our
conversation ends up being political and work-related, we also got up to a good
amount of shenanigans around the capital. We even took an impromptu day-trip to
the Zipaquira salt mines outside of
Bogota. These salt mines have ben turned into the stations of the cross
underground and are lit in psychedelic colors, making the whole scene seem like
something straight out of <i>Jesus Christ
Superstar</i>. Lee and I reveled. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lee left a basil plant, and paired with the sprouting lavender seeds Monica
sent me in her package last month, the urban garden is on the grow. In other
happy capital lifestyle related news: Emily and I have been cooking from
scratch. We have been dancing lots of salsa. We have been running the ciclovia,
a highlight of my every week. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At work, May was full full full! There was a conference on the ongoing (and
government ignored) issue of violent forced displacement, and our team’s final
push to publish our Drug War Pop-Ed booklet (second in the series on
“Demilitarizing Life and Land”). There were embassy meetings and accompanier’s protests
and reports to be written and urgent
actions to be taken. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What a month! Protests and resistance and oppression and violence! (Not
to mention research on protests and resistance and oppression and violence!) It’s
not easy, sometimes, and Baker London’s album release also brought a good
reminder to me this month: <i>“when the soul
needs reviving, though shall reach out for some help”</i>. And thus I continue
to reconnect with dear friends and family in far corners of the globe. It feels
good and I am so thankful for my support system sending me love from afar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sounds of the city pump my everyday life with rhythmic noises. The
traffic and horns of cars on busy streets. A man sings operetta outside of a
music store, seemingly directly addressing the guitars inside the window. Peddlers yell, vending everything from orange
juice to tamales outside our windows and on my walk to work. Our (new!)
pressure cooker whistles over black beans. Bikes shift gears on the Sunday
ciclovia. Blenders mix delicious passion
fruit juice for my constant consumption. The sunny Bogota mornings make me wake
thankful for every day and sometimes, walking home from the salsa studio late
at night, I catch a glimpse of the moon over the buildings. It draws my
attention and I just can’t look away. It reminds me of my close connection to
nature in Uraba. I revel in patches of trees when walking cross-town and deep
breathe on the top of Monseratte. The smell of grass at the Usaquen market reminds
me of summer. I miss the clean air and outside lifestyle of La Union, while
simultaneously feeling so much more whole now that I am in frequent
communication with dear friends. And I think again about just how adaptable we
are. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">June has a lot in store. Next week both the Montreal jazz ballet and Lila
Downs come to town (tough personal budget decisions!). By the end of next month
we will have a new team member, David. With a trip home on the horizon in
August, paired with the sensation that I just arrived in Bogota, I can’t help
but feel like time will fly this summer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have renewed my contract with FOR through March of 2013 and honestly
feel there is no work I would rather be doing; there is nowhere else I would
rather be. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-53869430741504176482012-05-17T15:09:00.000-07:002012-05-17T15:09:12.458-07:00TAKE ACTION! Conscientious Objection Sign-on Letter<br />
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<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Hey Everyone,</span></div>
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<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">W</span><span style="background-color: white;">e are trying to get</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><b>over 100 organizations</b><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">of all sizes, shapes and colors to sign-on to this letter about youth rights and conscientious objection. These could be community groups, collectives, schools, churches, university groups -- all are welcome! If you think your organization would be interested in signing on, please shoot me an email.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Thanks,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Gina</span></div>
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<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno</span></div>
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<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Minister of National Defense</span></div>
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<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Bogota, Colombia</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Dear Minister Pinzón:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">As representatives of faith-based, academic and other civil society organizations, we are deeply concerned about the human rights of Colombian youth who not only are recruited by illegal armed groups but also victims of illegal and irregular recruitment practices carried out by the Colombian military. We urge you to adopt practices throughout the Colombian military that will respect conscientious objectors, put an end to the illegal practice of street round ups (“batidas”), and adopt other recruitment protocols that strictly follow the law. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Colombia's Constitution requires all young men who are 18 years of age to fulfill obligatory military service. At the same time, Article 18 of the Constitution states that "...freedom of conscience is guaranteed. No one will be obliged to act against his/her conscience." Colombia is also a signer of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that recognizes the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The right to conscientious objection was made more explicit by the </span><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT210" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">United Nations</span></a></span> <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT211" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Committee" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Human Rights Committee</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"> in 1993, recognizing that the right to conscientiously object to military service can be derived from article 18 in the original </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">United Nations International </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">.<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Furthermore, the Colombian Constitutional Court sentence C-728 of 2009 recognizes the right to conscientious objection to military service under the Colombian Constitution. The legal requirement for the majority of young males to perform military service is now set against the right not to be forced to act in contravention of one’s deepest moral, religious or political convictions. The court stressed that even though no legislation governing the right to conscientious objection exists, it is immediately applicable, and protection can be sought through a <i>tutela</i>(writ for protection), in case the armed forces do not recognize it (para 5.2.6.5).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Despite the above-mentioned legal framework recognizing this right, in practice the Colombian armed forces demonstrate little knowledge of the rights of conscientious objectors, and force them to serve despite their personal convictions. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Colombia stated in its 2010 report:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">During 2010, OHCHR-Colombia observed irregular, and in some cases clearly illegal practices in the military recruitment process; these practices should be discontinued as soon as possible. Rapid development of mechanisms to regulate military service, including conscientious objection, with full respect for human rights, is urged.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Members of the Colombian armed forces carry out street round ups, illegally recruiting young men who are not carrying their <i>libreta militar</i>(military service card), a document that proves they have gone through the inscription process. Young men who are walking to school or work might be picked up through a street raid and find themselves, just a few hours later, in a military base beginning training to serve as soldiers. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared in its Opinion No 8/2008: “</span><i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">the practice of batidas or recruitment round-ups, whereby young men who cannot provide proof of their military status are apprehended on the streets or in public places, has no juridical foundation or legal basis.”<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[2]</span></b></span></span></a></span></i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"> According to a report issued by the Collective Action for Conscientious Objection (ACOOC), in less than a month’s time between August 21, 2010 and September 12, 2010 they documented over 100 youth who were illegally recruited in Bogota through the practice of street round ups.<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a> Additionally, groups have documented round ups in over 10 departments of Colombia and consider it to be a systematic practice carried out by the Colombian army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Consequently</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">, street roundups are defined as a “deprivation of liberty” and this is a violation of the 9th article of the</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"> United Nations</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">. </span><s><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></s><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Moreover, in November 2011, the Constitutional Court in its C-8488/11 ruling reaffirmed the right to object to military service and addressed the practice of street round ups declaring that they contravene Article 28 of the Constitution that protects Colombians from arbitrary detentions. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">The</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;"> Court, while reasserting the Colombian state’s right to compel young men to fulfill their military service obligation, determined that “article 41 of Law 48 of 1993 cannot be understood in such a way as granting the military the power to realize indiscriminate street round ups with the aim of identifying ‘remisos’ and after which taking them to a place of confinement, because this practice will be defined as an arbitrary detention, which is prohibited by Article 28 of the Constitution.”<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">In a recent case, Deivis Gregorio Martínez Castro, died on October 6, 2011, after he suffered a nervous collapse and jumped off the truck which was forcibly transporting him towards the military barracks in the city of Barranquilla.<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a> And several of the soldiers killed in Arauca by the FARC during the tragic March 18, 2012 episode were reportedly recruited<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a> through illegal street round-ups.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Other young people in Colombia are also victims of illegal and irregular recruitment practices. During routine recruitment appointments in which all young men 18 years of age must present themselves for their obligatory service, the military determines who is apt for service through physical and mental exams. Victims of displacement, students, indigenous people and others are exempt from fulfilling their military service. But in many cases, regardless of documentation presented to prove exemption, and in clear violation of Colombian law, military officials have incorporated the person into the military ranks anyway. For example, according to the Medellín Youth Network, on August 31, 2011, twelve youth were detained by the IV Brigade to fulfill their military service, despite being exempt because they were students.<a href="http://sz0056.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/mail?view=msg&id=128943#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">We are concerned about the forced recruitment of youth carried out by illegal armed groups and we write to you because the army must respect young people’s human rights as a legitimate force of the state. All young people have the internationally recognized right to not take part in military service if it violates their conscience and to not be victims of irregular or illegal recruitment practices. We urge you to immediately take all appropriate measures to:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt;">· </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Stop the illegal practice of street round ups;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt;">· </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Educate the armed forces of the rights of Colombian youth and conscientious objectors;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt;">· </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Ensure that recruitment is carried out according to Colombian law;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt;">· </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Establish procedures to sanction officials who carry out arbitrary detentions of youth who don't have their military service cards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">The rights, consciences, and lives of young people, especially those who have declared themselves conscientious objectors -- a right now recognized by the Colombian Constitutional Court -- should be respected under all circumstances.</span></div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-72085052769852575242012-05-03T10:48:00.000-07:002012-05-03T10:48:14.007-07:00april: holy week, rumi, the summit of the americas, and tax day- so write me a letter, tell me your favorite song...<style>
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<span lang="EN-US">April kicked off with Holy Week and my departure from the
CdP. As most people in Latin America will tell you, Semana Santa is not the
week to travel. As if to rub it in, Semana Santa brought on airport closures
and inclement weather to prevent my south-bound travels. I took off early in
the morning for the airport in Apartado, only to sit there all day and then
return, again, all the way to La Union. I arrived, laughing at the rising full moon,
which seemed to be somehow conspiring with me, and thinking about how I was
supposed to explain this return to everyone to whom I’d already said goodbye. I
teased my neighbors who had cried that morning and told them all of the angels
in heaven were crying in solidarity with them, and thus my plane could not fly.
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">And so it was that I came to spend a few more days in La
Union. So it was that I came to see a neighbor walk by with freshly butchered
pig meat wrapped in banana leaves.<span>
</span>And see the early risers off to work with their horses and mules. This
is how I saw the roof of the library fall in and, later in the night, I saw stars through it. How I said goodbye to everyone who tried not to have to
say goodbye to me. And watch my neighbors carry wood on their shoulders and
sharpen their machetes and chop wood for their stoves like they do. This is how
I heard salsa and vallenato and heard a child sing me a romantic ranchero at
her grandmother’s house. I got to talk again with my neighbors, hold my
favorite babies, and sing songs with the kids. I had a few more days to say
goodbye to bunuelos by eating them in excess, and say goodbye to the magical,
mystical cacautera and the relaxing breeze at the kiosks by simply being in them. I had a few more days
to collect avocados and unripe mangos to stuff in my bag headed for the
capital. I had time for a neighbor to tell me I stuck more to this town than
gum to her shoe. (This was, of course, the second time that my initial travel
date away from LU didn’t work out; in November I came back after there were
landslides on the highway.) And this is how I came to repeat tearfull goodbyes.
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I know that there are so many beautiful places and people in the
world; I know there are so many places to go and people to meet. I know this,
but it doesn’t matter. In those last few days, sitting at the kiosk, it is only
<span> </span>the cana and the sound of the
machetes hidden inside the fields. At the tank it is only the blast furnace
breeze through the cacao and the perfectly shaped green mangoes hanging from a
tree. It is only the sound of the rain approaching the plateau, and the wind in
the palms imitating that rain. In the end, breathing the air in La Union, it is
hard to believe there is air anywhere else. It is hard to believe there is
anywhere else that one is supposed to go.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">And so it was that on my (second) last walk down to town, it is
pissing rain and the river is waist deep and the current strong. A jungle whose
life is everywhere in the deep greens and bright colors growing out and
reaching for the two women at the side of the river, and then one starts her
way across. Wet to the waist with a now wet bag on my back and my legs shaking
from trying sooo hard to fight the current, I make it to the sand bar. I look
back at my friend, who is under a blue pancho, crying in the downpouring rain
because I am leaving and she is too scared to cross with the rushing water and
her yelling at the top of her lungs DONT YOU DARE FUCKING DROWN and me barely
hearing her over the rushing water and my legs trying so hard not to fall. And
then all the way across, waiving back at her and then walking away through the
sheets of rain and intense greens, alone, craddled by the life of
the jungle. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">And so it was that I arrived to Bogota to letters and candies from
friends in far away places. And so it was that during my first week in Bogota,
I marinated in this Rumi poem, honoring the love I left with the CdP:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Tender words we spoke</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">to one another</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">are sealed in the secret vaults </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">of heaven.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">One day like rain,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">they will fall to earth</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">and grow green</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">all over the world</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I arrived to Bogota just in time to do some
serious retreat preparations and then take off to Medellin for a week of
full-team intensive planning for the next six months. It was exhausting, but
overall we felt we got a lot done. It looks like I will be extending my time
with FOR for a while yet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Aside from my movement, April had some events
worth mentioning:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The Summit of the Americas was held in Cartagena,
Colombia this month. I guess most of the international news covered the secret
service and armed forces cavorting with prostitutes, rather than the diplomatic
Summit announcements like, for example, the passing of the Free Trade Agreement
with Colombia (despite serious questions to the Obama administration about how exactly
Colombia meets the Human Rights requirements) that is set to officially being
May 15<sup>th</sup>.<span> </span>Or the
People’s Summit where, alternative to the diplomatic summit, civilian groups got
together to try and organize a people’s agenda. Emily and Susana represented
FOR in Cartagena at this alternative summit. Here is a video where participants
in the People’s Summit responded to the question, “What would you like to see
come out of U.S.-Colombia policy?” Emily and the Bogota Witness for Team rocked
out the taping and editing of this video over the weekend of the Summit: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">http://forusa.org/multimedia/fifth-peoples-summit</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">If you are interested, take the time to read the declaration
from the people’s summit, which I posted far below.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Most of you probably paid taxes this month.
Did you know 53% of your tax dollars go to U.S. military spending? With some
quick math, you can figure out exactly how many dollars that was. Gross.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Colombian President Santos made it onto the
cover of Time magazine this month. I haven’t read the article yet, but the
continued US-Colombia administration collaboration and acceptance by the international
media/ mutual back-patting has me more than slightly uneasy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Now I have been in Bogota for two weeks. I
have been climbing Monseratte to get some air and see some trees, I have been
dancing salsa, listening to music and using the oven. We said goodbye to Jon, joined a food co-op,
started recycling, and were a part of setting the Guiness Book of World Records
for the most people dancing cumbia in one place (highlight of my life!). I am
listening to the new Baker London album online and skyping my family and
friends. I am enjoying being reconnected to my bigger world of Gina pastpresentfuture, and I am missing being
connected to LU. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">A package from Monica and Chris just
arrived and I filled my office with bubbles! Dad comes in town tonight! I live
in Bogota now. Write me letters. Send me e-mails. Alert me when you have
purchased your tickets to come visit. Hurrah!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Time and thought and space and tender words
and blaring transitions and world politics and the life of the jungle and the life of the city and gentle movements and big plans and bigger improvisations
and spiraling whirlwinds, all pumped with the sound of salvation… and somehow I
have made it to the merry merry month of May.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Declaration from the People’s Summit in
Cartagena: </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0cm;">
<em><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Declaration of the People’s
Summit</span></em><em><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></em></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0cm;">
<em><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Cartagena, 2012</span></em><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/declaracion-de-la-v-cumbre-de-los-pueblos/10518">Versión
en español.</a></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">The
social and people’s organizations of the continent, gathered in the V People’s
Summit – The True Voice of the Americas – from April 12-14 in Cartagena de
Indias at the same time as the <span class="caps">VI</span> Summit of the
Americas, declare:<br />
<br />
We vigorously reject the insistence of the United States government to impose
its agenda and decide the direction of these summits. Proof of this can be seen
in its veto of Cuba’s participation in the Summit of the Americas as well as
its strategy of militarization (for which it uses as a pretext the failed war
on drugs, attention to natural disasters, and immigration control) as a way to
maintain <span class="caps">US</span> hegemony. A fundamental component of this
strategy is the criminalization of social movements.<br />
<br />
The imperialist policies of the United States can be seen in its support of the
coup d’ètat in Honduras and <span class="caps">US</span> backing of the
illegitimate regime of Porfirio Lobo, its efforts to destabilize Haiti, its
ongoing economic blockade of Cuba and the continued presence of the Guantanamo
military base, as well as its opposition to the sovereignty of Argentina in the
Falkland Islands.<br />
<br />
It has been evident, following the Summit of Trinidad and Tobago [June 2009],
that the government of President Obama has not fulfilled its offer to construct
a new type of relationship with Latin America. In spite of the failure of th
Free Trade Area of the Americas proposal, the United States government, in
order to dodge the acute economic crisis that it has faced since 2007, insists
on promoting free trade agreements and the entire neoliberal agenda which are an
obstacle for regional integration and have mired the majority of the countries
of the continent in backwardness and misery.<br />
<br />
<span class="imagetitle"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">For
its part, the Canadian government has declared a politics of free trade
agreements, mega-industrial mining, and natural resource extraction in all of
Latin America. Its industries are causing irreversible damages to the
environment and to biodiversity, violating the rights of the people to their
land. Social and environmental conflicts are multiplying as a result of this
predatory model.<br />
<br />
We recognize the advances in efforts at autonomous regional integration such as
those established in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (<span class="caps">ALBA</span>), the Union of South American Nations (<span class="caps">UNASUR</span>), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (<span class="caps">CELAC</span>). However, the construction and financing
of democratic, progressive, and leftist governments must move toward overcoming
a model based on extraction, agricultural monocultures for export, and the
hoarding of land. Such practices damage essential rights such as free and
informed prior consent and impede the full deployment of social movements as
forces capable of deepening change.<br />
<br />
The confluence of these governmental streams and those of social and political
movements can be preserved to the degree that the people deepen their unity,
their social and political mobilization, and do not renounce their autonomy and
their ability to guarantee their rights. We note with satisfaction the
sustained, non-violent, popular struggles against the neoliberal model.<br />
<br />
At this V People’s Summit – The True Voice of the Americas, thousands of
fighters from organizations of women, unions, students, farmers, indigenous
people, African-descended people, small businesses, and ecumenical religious
persons gathered from throughout the hemisphere. We deliberated on the problems
that we consider truly fundamental for our countries and we moved forward in
the construction of proposals and so, among other petitions, we demand:<br />
<br />
- The elimination of foreign military bases, the end of colonialism, the
cancellation of joint military and police exercises and training, the closing
of the School of the Americas and the elimination of the Inter-American Defense
System, and the end of the deployment of the <span class="caps">IV</span> fleet
in our waters.<br />
<br />
- The end of militarization under the pretext of the war on drugs and its
replacement by a comprehensive, multilateral policy with emphasis on public
health measures.<br />
<br />
- The end of the militarization of civil functions such as humanitarian
assistance, disaster response, and immigration control.<br />
<br />
- The end of the criminalization of social movements, and to the use of
indigenous, afro, and campesino [small farmer] lands as battlefields. No to
forced recruitment, to the use of women as spoils of war, and to forced
displacement. In the case of Colombia, in which an armed, internal conflict
persists, militarization has put these people on the brink of extinction.<br />
<br />
- The elimination of free trade agreements and investments that deepen poverty,
social exclusion, and inequality and which particularly affect women.<br />
<br />
- The end of indiscriminate promotion of foreign investment, looking instead
for relationships of cooperation and mutual benefit and the strengthening of
autonomous processes of integration. The rights of investors cannot be above
the rights of the people and of the environment. We condemn transnational
companies as the primary actors in this model.<br />
<br />
- We call for a new regional financial architecture that incorporates: South
Bank, the Latin American Reserve Fund, and puts and end to the impoverishing
politics of debt.<br />
<br />
- Real solutions to the environmental and climate crisis directed toward its
structural causes through rebuilding the financial architecture and thereby
changing the development model. We defend life and common goods in the face of
the commodification of nature driven by multilateral financial institutions and
the countries of the North.<br />
<br />
- Respect for the right of the people to decide their agriculture policies and
assure their food sovereignty, to conserve and consume their native products,
all of which are threatened by monocultures, biofuels, genetically modified
organisms, and big mining.<br />
<br />
- The creation of decent work for all, the guarantee of freedom of association
and collective bargaining, and the end to violence against rural and urban
workers of the continent to be made a priority.<br />
<br />
- Effective changes in the education systems that assure full access to
education with democratic participation in the education establishment and against
the privatization and commodification of education. In defense of the right to
education, we support the demand of the student movement of the continent for
their education to be free and universal.<br />
<br />
- Reestablish the right of Cuba to pertain to the multilateral system. Demand
the United States cease the blockade of Cuba and cease its hostility toward
governments that do not follow its dictates.<br />
<br />
- The deepening of autonomous integration processes without the interference of
the government of the United States, and the construction of broad processes of
integration from the grassroots with respect, recognition, and incorporation of
input from the communities for a society based in cooperation, good quality of
life for all, and the construction of a culture of peace. Sister nations of the
continent join with Colombia in the search for a negotiated and peaceful
solution to the armed conflict.<br />
<br />
We lament that the beautiful city of Cartagena is at the same time an example
of inequality and poverty, and today of militarization with the occasion of the
official summit of the presidents. We call upon all social sectors of the
American continent so that we might undertake unanimously the struggles for the
principles and aspirations described in this declaration, inviting them to
accompany the peaceful mass civilian mobilization to achieve the proposed ends.<br />
<br />
Finally, we consider that the Summit of the Americas cannot continue being an
exclusive stage, subordinated to the empire, a simulation of false harmonies. This
is our voice, the true voice of the people of the Americas and thus we proclaim
it before the world.</span></div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-10142989704601988062012-04-12T07:57:00.000-07:002012-04-12T07:57:45.681-07:00Muchos Pueblos, Una Lucha<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March kicks off with my three rest days for the month, and after five petitions in three weeks, I am ready for it. I spend the weekend in Apartado, where I read all of “About a Boy” and skype with family and friends and have a drink with some PBIers. I reflect on how quickly I adapted back to campo life. I wake early in the morning. I jump at a car’s lights in the dark. I dream of the cacautera. I go to sleep early and drink cold things and eat ice cream. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March kicks off with more deaths and more vigils and more mourning- during my weekend in town, my co-worker tells me first thing when I arrive back home, I missed one vigil. In the next days there would be more, the leap year living up to its reputation. <span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Avocados and mangos start to grow. I have a severe talk with several trees, hoping that one will have some ripe fruit before I leave for Bogota in a month. Yes, I speak to avocados and mangos in the first week of March. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">On International Women’s Day, the men cook and serve the women a delicious lunch. I am impressed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">At the comunitario, I walk my favorite path for the first time since being back and remember other trips to the boca toma. I think about how this land, despite its changing seasons and scapes, holds all of our history. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">For the first couple weeks of March, my baby blanket is missing more than it is found. When I asked my friend about it she simply says, “Why, your baby blanket, you say? Are you missing your diapers as well?” I usually found it pretty quick, but one time when they hid it, I was still looking after two days. I had to get to the bottom of it. When, after a round of hot and cold hints, it was located in the compost, I started hiding it myself. From there on out, I slept with it every night. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">While standing on the large rock next to the kiosk talking to Emily on the phone one day, I feel something wet on the back of my leg and I giggle. She asks who tickled me. I turn around to see the culprit, none other than: Loud Cow! Loud Cow licked me! From ankle to thigh! And then just blinked his long eyelashes at me as if I was supposed to know what he wanted. And in identifying Loud Cow, I said, “Loud Cow! So nice to see you! How you have grown!” And I understand for the first time how everyone knows whose everyone’s animals are: they watch them grow from birth. The free range madness of a year ago seems now like such organized chaos.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In the evening she serves me hot chocolate and says we should look out the window, as it is “the hour of the deer.” So we do. But I don’t see any deer on the field. Actually, I never see any deer on that field or anywhere else in the war zone jungle. But her comment does make me think of home. Because in Minnesota, at dusk, the fields are always full of deer. I tell her this, but she doesn’t believe me. Equally disbelieving, I wonder if someone has just told her of this “hour of the deer” or if there are indeed deer in the tropics. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">One evening I count five children, all different ages, all from different families, sitting on my bed and talking to me and being silly. For a second I am lost in this thought: where else on the planet will this<span> </span>happen to me? Where else will all of my neighbors walk into my house and sit on my bed and talk to me without an invitation and without thinking twice? Where else will I be surrounded by so many children? And I felt so whole and cradled by their presence. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">At the water tank in the cacaotera, she tells me about the witch that killed her big sister. We talk about mangoes and laugh about our now shared history. We dance vallenato on top of the tank with the kids, inspired by music that plays from her phone. On the way back down to town, the 6pm national anthem comes on the radio and they sing it mockingly as we crunch over dry leaves. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Cristian and I climb trees for large, juicy, red pomas. He tells me stories of the haunted house on the hill and we fill my backpack with fruit. Later I learn that another neighbor, 26 years old, planted the tree we climbed as a school assignment when she was ten years old. I have this overwhelming urge to thank her. And thank her teacher. And thank that tree. And thank the jungle that let it grow so quickly. Because in Minnesota, for that tree to grow that tall from a sprig would take generations. I decide there is so much to be thankful for. I decide this jungle is magical.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">French reporters come and interview us about accompaniment: What is solidarity? What is deterrence? What is peaceful resistance to war? What is nonviolence? After we speak to them for some time, I walk away and think to myself- if this community can do all that it has for peace and nonviolence all while in the middle of the war zone, why can’t the rest of the world get on board?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">“Where did this cat come from?” The town buzzes with hatred for the new chicken-eating fat cat that showed up overnight. I am, also, totally baffled by where it came from, but have no hatred for its hunting skills. I just think the cat is smart. I had sort of always wondered why the other cats didn’t eat chickens- they are obviously easier to catch than birds that fly or bats. Soon I realize why: because this cat is to be killed for its “bad habit.” (By which they refer to its brains, so we can just assume that all smart cats have been killed off in the region and that is why none of them eat chicken.) This particular cat is scared of all of my neighbors (brains), but not scared of me. It isn’t long before everyone has me pegged as the one to catch this kitty. Not hard, but every time I pick it up and start walking towards a neighbor’s house I sort of let it go. On purpose. “Gina!” She yells at me, “Why do you keep letting him go?” “I feel like such a traitor (heavy word for the zone) and I can’t kill a cat,” I say. “I’m not going to kill it,” she says, “I’m gonna take it down to San Jose and dump it there.” I laugh, and say, “Well, I guess now we know how it got here.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">We go for bananas, but get caught up in conversation about her family’s displacement and the FARC and the military and where they went when she was a child and what they did. We get caught in conversation about her first boyfriend and the one time she went to the beach and what she did with her brothers and cousins for fun when they were young. We get caught in her history, all of it pumped with visions of war. And then we get caught in the rain. We stand, two feet apart, under huge banana leaves and listen as the storm rolls in over us. We keep talking and laughing, louder and louder until our voices hurt from screaming and then we just look at each other until the rain comes down so hard that I can no longer see her through it. And then, just like it came, the rain stops and we walk home through dripping leaves. We see all sorts of creatures coming out of their hiding spaces. Monkeys jump out right in front of us, daring us to play in the banana trees with them. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">The 15<sup>th</sup> Anniversary of the Peace Community is March 23<sup>rd</sup>. My last blog post is an article about it- the activities and marches and some poignant things my neighbors said. It was amazing to be a part of the celebration and it’s so humbling to be a small part of this community’s struggle. The town bustled with activity leading up to the event. People came from all or the world, I think there was at least one foreigner for every CdP member. The saying, <i>somos muchos pueblos, pero solo una lucha</i>, is about the best way to sum it all up. FOR sent up nearly the whole team and we ran around like crazy people. For the dance I had my hair braided and borrowed a beautiful skirt from a neighbor and modified a FOR shirt to be runway 2012 fashionable. And we danced. All night long. Literally, until the dawn, we danced. And after being up all night in silent vigil and mourning during the past months in the very same kiosk, it was nice to welcome the dawn dancing there. It felt right and fitting and a perfect way to celebrate 15 years of peaceful resistance to war. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is black birds with long yellow tails sailing across the sky</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is making brooms from picked plants and letting the garden grow</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is children throwing dried dry-season leaves at one another in the cacaotera, reminding me of jumping into leave piles as a kid in the north country</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is carrying sugarcane and feeding it through a smokey machine to make guarapo and then boiling it to make honey</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It’s the wind in the palms sounding like rain</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is a young girl singing me romantic ranchera and various vallenatos blasting from homes, bug bites and plant scratches scathing my body, bathing in rivers and sleeping in hammocks, pre-dawn dusty blue skies, mid-day stifling heat and the inspiration that rises in the penumbra of the moon</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is the sweat that falls with every swing of the arm and the rhythmic sound of the machete </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is Ants on logs, spiders in webs, bees in honeycomb and it is dead fish in a floating pond, drown after a hard rain (Fish that drown, woah) </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is parrots as they begin their nightly calls, with the cows and the parakeets and the bugs and the thunder threatening against the back drop of a bright blue sky, lilac purple and deep red flowers popping out of the green backdrop of the jungle, a huge bug like a leaf and a huge bug like a stick walking over me on my bed</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is picking beans in the hot sun and then removing them from their shells in the shade</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is stealing papaya from my neighbor’s trees and holding new born babies and holding year old babies who I met the day they were born</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is days for planting and days for harvesting, tanning with the cacao on a neighbor’s roof and reciting Spanish tongue twisters as I hand wash my laundry</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is frijoles con coles, primitivo con leche and squash soup served to me in my neighbor’s homes</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is walking along ridges and across rivers, planting cacao and climbing trees</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is friendly small town interaction: a man walks by my window at with arepas. He passes a women carrying meat from a just butchered pig- they joke about swapping to make a complete meal and wave to me through the window. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is births the same week as deaths that have men carrying up hammocks and caskets daily</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">It is ants and cockroaches and rats in the kitchen, which turns into Gina deep-cleaning with her favorite neighbors, which turns into a water-fight. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">March is cycles: in weather and in life and in death and in harvests and in anniversaries. It is my one year celebration in the Peace Community. And the Peace Community’s 15<sup>th</sup> year anniversary. And a party with arroz con leche to welcome Dominique who, in the final week of the month, celebrates her first week in the war zone.</div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-35988512470320270692012-04-02T06:25:00.000-07:002012-04-02T06:25:42.758-07:00Article on the 15th Anniversary of the CdP<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>739</o:Words> <o:Characters>4214</o:Characters> <o:Company>FOR</o:Company> <o:Lines>35</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>9</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>4944</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;">Here is an article I wrote on the 15th Anniversary </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">celebrations</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;"> of the CdP last week. It is also posted to FOR's blog, with a few pictures from the march here: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">http://forusa.org/blogs/for-colombia/peace-community-turns-fifteen/10414</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I thought it was great, all of it,” said one CdP member in reflection of the celebrations around the 15 year anniversary of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado (CdP for its acronym un Spanish). “15 years! Can you believe it? These events are the kinds of celebrations we need as a community to give us the strength and endurance to keep on fighting for our lives and our community,” said one man who has been a part of the community process since the CdP was founded in 1997.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On March 23<sup>rd</sup> CdP members from all of the community villages as well as national and international supporters of the CdP travelled to the community village of San Josecito, where we gathered in the newest community kiosk. The kiosk was built last year as a monument to all of the dead who have given their lives while trying to build a peaceful alternative to war in the CdP. For the celebration the kiosk was lined with photos of resistance from both the CdP as well as photos sent from other communities in resistance around Colombia. Banners and letters were sent from human right organizations all around the world and posters were made by community members themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Padre Javier summed up fifteen years of CdP history. He spoke of the massacres and the displacements and the deaths and he also spoke about the process of resistance and how certain beautiful things came out of the dark history. He talked, for example, about how the idea of self-sustenance came out of the food blockade. He talked about how women’s work groups formed in response to men being killed and displaced. He talked about how alternative education came to be because traditional teachings about the state and the war didn’t ring true in the CdP experience. International solidarity groups spoke about their work with the CdP and how this community has the ability to inspire people all over the globe. Liza Smith spoke on behalf of FOR, and talked about the ten years that we have spent permanently accompanying the village of La Union. There were many speakers from the CdP itself, men and women who now are 30 years old and raising their own children talked about being the youth as the community was being founded and how it has affected their lives and their ability to build an alternative for their kids. Community members spoke about how far they have come and about the current culture of death that surrounds them. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After a lunch prepared at the community kitchen, the entire group marched through San Jose where the community was founded, just as they did fifteen years ago to the day, and then hiked the two hours up through the jungle to La Union. During the march men, women and children held photos of family members and neighbors who have been killed. They carried everyone who has been a part of this process with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In La Union, the group toured the Agricultural Center, which is the community’s response to being completely self-sustaining. One resident said, “We are so proud of this village and all we have done here. We are thankful for the accompaniment that makes this possible and we are happy to be celebrating 15 years of resistance during which we have built a healthy alternative to the reality of this zone, which is war.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everyone gathered in the central kiosk, built to commemorate the community leaders killed in La Union in the 2000 massacre, and watched a video made by Oxfam during the first year of the community. “Honestly, this video just makes me laugh. We were so young. We were so excited about what we were starting and at the same time had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. It was the first time any of us were interviewed on video, the first time we were asked to talk about the community for people that weren’t a part of the process,” said one man. His wife added, “That video also serves as a nice piece of historical memory, because in that first march there were so many of us. Thousands of people started this community together, and over the years so many of those people have been killed or displaced or disappeared. Sometimes it’s hard for me to watch those interviews and think of all the people we have lost in this fight. It also reminds us where we came from. In those years we did everything together. We had community meetings twice a day; we paid attention to where everyone was at all times for all of our safety. It’s hard to believe how far we have come.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While there is certainly a lot of pain in the war zone, both historically and today, the CdP is an example of how peaceful resistance is effective. All during the day we reflected on where the CdP came from and who was lost on the way and what was built and how and then in the evening the music was turned up really loud and men grabbed partners and headed to the dance floor. Because the CdP is 15 years old, and even though a high price was paid to turn 15, there are still people here resisting. And that is reason enough to dance. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">My last few days in Bogotá, at the beginning of February, brought an awesome visit from Fernando. We talked about old friends and Guatemala and saw a concert and drank beer at sundown in the bustling capital I then called home. He brought Rosa de Jamaica Quetzalteca and letters from dear friends back in Xela. Good for the soul. My last few days in Bogota brought an Austrian delegation from FOR Austria and were filled with meetings at the Congress and with other NGOs. My last few days in Bogota had me bumming in parks with Lisa and Luna and Cristian and making dried floral crafts with Jon. And packing. And freaking out. And then taking two planes, one jeep ride and hiking two hours to arrive in La Union. Home. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Two of the CdP kids, my two best pals, met me in the terminal (surprise!) in Apartado and (bless their teenage souls) carried up my bags. I arrived in La Union to no electricity and no co-workers (petition to La Resbalosa had Emily and Carla 7 hours through the jungle and Elisabeth was with aforementioned Austrian delegation in Bogota). I had two days to sink back into it. My legs ached from the hike home (what happened to my cut November physical condition?!) and I was sweating 100% of the time (god, this really is uncomfortable) and every mosquito within a 1,298,377,456,309 mile radius found my ass cheeks (within 20 minutes!) and the shower was freezing (is it really necessary to clean myself?) and my body was on serious cheese withdrawal (this no fridge thing is for the birds). I also had two days to greet people and look around and take it all in…<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In my absence the garden had grown. A pineapple planted a few rotations of FOR volunteers back was sprouting in the garden and the baby papayas on our tree when I left are now huge and tempting. The AVOCADO TREE IS FLOWERING! The very first FOR garden avocado harvest will happen in May! Whoever was on the team many years ago when the tree was planted should be hugged and thanked for their long-term strategic planning. In the event you read my blog: dear ex-volunteer, THANK YOU! Love, future volunteer who will be here in May.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In my absence bellies grew. And babies were born. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">In my absence Sapa had a liter of three and developed a skin rash. She now has a beauty cream to be applied daily and kittens that live in my bed.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The rainy season ended and paths with knee-deep mud turned to dusty caminos with loose pebbles. Rivers then waist deep are now all but dry. The lush, thick greens of the jungle gave way to less dense and varied greens and more bright flowering jungle colors. The rainy season’s thickly cloud covered sunsets gave way to whispy, near cloudless sunsets where the sun drops out of the sky a fiery red or fuscia pink. Colors that, to a midwestern gal, look like a painting of some fake tropical paradise. Because this is some tropical paradise- only real. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The guava trees of November have small seeds and now it is the poma and passion fruit and guanabana that are being ravanged by children and birds and Ginas. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like always there is sugar cane. Like always there is cacao. There are troops and combats and death. There are baby cows and baby horses and there are young boys chasing after baby cows at night to tie them up so that in the morning the mother cows have milk to give these boys. Like always there are children running barefoot over rocky fields and women cooking over smokey stoves. And stories of life and death and how the former breeds the later and the later inspires the former. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then Emily and Charlotte came back. And there was an emergency night petition, and before we knew it, Emily and I were working together again in the campo- hiking (she in tip-top ten month jungle condition, jumping like a mountain goat up rocks and then I- struggling in the dark and vertical hill, to not actually keel over and die from the pain in my legs) as fast as we could with flashlights behind our campesino neighbors, also running, as it was an emergency. On our way back down the two men we were with and Em caught me up on what happened here over Christmas. And we sang a couple songs and shared a few brainteasers. My favorite of the midnight mind games: “Which side of the coffee cup has the handle?” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The next day (as in, less than 24 hours later) we had a goodbye soiree for Emily. We made a nice arroz con leche. People came over. We chatted. And took photos. And then Emily was, once again, walking away from me down the hill and Charlotte and I were holding down the fort in the campo (Elisabeth still MIA with Austrian delegation, who were all to descend upon us in the campo later in the afternoon.) I think I confused some of them seeing them Monday in Bogota and then welcoming them on Saturday to La Union… <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then another petition came. And 48 hours later, Charlotte and I were trekking through the jungle to La Esperanza. We hiked a new route which took us alternating back and forth between dense jungle thickets and highland fields with expansive sweeping views of the upcoming jungle and surrounding mountains. It was good to by hiking in the day time, and the paths are SO different without knee-deep mud. We saw tall blooming trees with fiery red and orange flowers, transparent orange and electric blue butterflies with wings the size of my palm, green lizards and black snakes on the dry brown path. In La Esperanza we watched the community play soccer on the soccer field. We slept in hammocks with a hot balmy breeze on the porch of the house. We bathed in a nearly dry river and watched men chase cows. And listened to babies cry and children imitate barn animals (after about a half an hour of which Charlotte got a laugh outta me by commenting, “these kids need to learn how to read.”) We saw parrots fly in trios across an expansive blue sky. We saw chickens climb up trees in the last light of the evening sun and the matriarch of the household milk cows at it’s first showing in the morning. We saw boys carry bunches of bananas and plantains bigger than the boys themselves and we watched the bigger boys hack machetes through thick sugar cane fields. At night, from my hammock on the porch, I could look out over the dark fields and see an outline of the mountains in the near distance. Above the darkness of their shadow, millions of stars sparkled in the valley with no electricity and below their outline, in the darkness, fireflies flew over short dry-season grass. Sparkling glittery stars above and blinking fireflies below. A dream for open eyes before dreaming with closed eyes. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The day we left La Esperanza Charlotte turned 25 years old. On her 25<sup>th</sup> birthday we hiked 6 hours through Colombian war zone jungle. Woah. We arrived at home tired, but excited to do <i>something</i> to celebrate. Considering I had now been in La Union for two weeks without going down for food, we had NOTHING to make. We went house to house collecting ingredients- wood for the fire, a large pot to cook in, a chicken, onion, yucca, plantain, spices, (“You see, it is Carla’s birthday and we simply must make a birthday soup! We have been working so very hard in La Esperanza that we haven’t even thought about our own sustenance! Can you help us? Pretty please? Of course, you are invited to the celebration!”) And our neighbors (of course) rallied. One volunteered to kill the chicken if I wasn’t up for it. Another got right on heating up the fire for the stove. And more came around to congratulate Carla on surviving another year and eat chicken soup. I had commissioned birthday cakes before leaving, and we arrived in time to see them decorated. All in all, a very good turn out for ¼ century birthday party. After the food (straight sugar high for the vegetarian who ate a dinner of birthday cake) I literally fell into my bed of exhaustion and, after all those nights in a hammock, I slept oh so well.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We had, count them, two days between Charlotte’s birthday and our next petition. One of those days I went for food (solid decision). My legs, on the way down to town, were so tired that I fell (or better put, melted to the ground slowly in surrender) a few times, sending my neighbor with whom I was walking into a laughing fit every time. On the way back up, from the back of the jeep, I saw my first ever jungle cat. It ran across the road. I was so excited I nearly jumped off the jeep to chase it. My neighbor looked at me as if I were insane, but later conceded to my excitement and agreed that it was rare to see them. This and only this made the pain that would befall my entire body upon arrival at home made the trip for food worth it. Ok, this and the fact that we could eat again. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Our next petition was for Mulatos. Again Charlotte and I were on the move, this time with hundreds of Peace Community members and national and international human rights activists and supporters of the Peace Community, hiking through the jungle to the location of the 2005 (most recent) massacre against Peace Community members in Mulatos and La Resbalosa. Here is a (very) brief history on what went down there on February 21<sup>st</sup> and 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2005: <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Mulatos, on Feb 21<sup>st</sup>, alongside the river, eye witnesses saw uniformed military detain three community members (one of which was a leader and founder of the community, the other two were his wife and child). The three were tortured and massacred. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In La Resbalosa (an hour or so hike up a vertical hill from Mulatos) on the 22<sup>nd</sup>: Workers saw the military approach and ran, one Peace Community member went back to his house, where his family was. He, his family (two children) and a worker on their farm were tortured and massacred. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This long story of this massacre and the ensuing judicial processes, wikileaks, press statements, armed forces denial of involvement etc. is something I would be happy to discuss with anyone interested, but for the blog I’ll just note that this massacre led the Peace Community to officially enter “ruptura” with the Colombian state. The impunity for these acts and the lack of a thorough, transparent and complete investigation into the joint military and paramilitary responsibility (in this massacre and others) are two main reasons that the Peace Community is not willing to enter into dialog with the Colombian state at this point in time. One quick quote to give you an idea of the level of denial in Colombia (from the Colombian Minister of Defense at that point in time, Jorge Alberto Uribe, quoted in a national newspaper, in response to Peace Community members being killed): “One can’t talk about neutrality because there is no conflict!”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While the reason for this commemoration is obviously serious and somber, there is also something inspiring about hiking in a large group of people through thick jungle and over ridges, laughing and talking and enjoying snacks and views. After keeping up with the front end of the walkers in the first lag of the trip, I arrived to the top of the hill with two of my neighbors and we saw a heavy presence of helicopters flying very low near where we live. One of them said, “looks like there is combat in Arenas Altas.” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Upon arrival in Mulatos, everyone hung around and did what they pleased for the rest of the afternoon. I bathed in a low water, near stagnant river with a child. She said, “Why do you have so many mosquito bites on your backside? Don’t those itch?” I said, “They sure do… thanks for noticing.” I also got a good laugh while unpacking my bag and finding basil, a bikini, an extra video camera, three pairs of sunglasses, perfume, and a bunch of other useless items that I myself did not pack. It seems I left my bag alone outside before departure and my neighbors added a couple of kilos of weight. On the video camera was a video of them doing it: “Quick! Here she comes! Close the bag!” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then there was another petition at night, because the last group to leave La Hollandita never arrived. And we were off, running behind our neighbors to look for the lost community members and human rights activists from Bogota. But we found them, and we rejoiced, and it seemed everything was great. But on the walk back one of the neighbors with whom I was at the top of the hill watching the combat said to me in a near whisper, “Gina, it looks like that combat took Antonio’s son. And Marlober. They sent the news from La Union that he should good home.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Padre Javier gave mass on the morning of the 22<sup>nd</sup> and told the story of Luis Eduardo and his family in Mulatos. And we listened to an interview with Luis Eduardo, which talked about the founding of the Peace Community. And we heard his famous quote, from a month before he died, which I posted in my last blog. Enough to give you the chills. And we listened to Padre Javier as he told us that the death of peaceful leaders has inspired this community time and time again to resist violence. And when I said this I looked at the father who had lost a son, but he didn’t seem to be registering anything at all. We then hiked to La Resbalosa and heard the story (from testimony of eye-witnesses) that happened there. We listened to it at the site of the massacre. We sat in a cacaotera and heard about a massacre. The same way that this community does every year. They remember their dead and where they came from and how hard it has been for them and I feel that after one year I know all of these stories by heart, because I do. But these people know the whole story. The lives of these people, from the day they were born to the day they died. All of them. And the story repeats itself, over and over. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The last night in Mulatos was, of course, difficult, but we tried to make it fun. Because this community knows how to celebrate life. People sang and danced. A pig was killed and rice was cooked. I was stung by three bees. I walked with a two year old to the soccer field where, from at least 200 yards away she identified all of our neighbors (I didn’t know whether she was right half the time, but I was amazed nonetheless). In the morning we walked home, the same way we came and arrived to La Union in time for a funeral. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Weeks ago Charlotte told me about a conversation she had with a new mother who was grateful to have a baby girl: “it’s definitely better to have girls here, because the war takes away our boys.” Had I heard this, I probably would have nodded in agreement, but I thought about this because that day we were morning the loss of one girl and one boy. It all seemed so equal and all seemed so unfair. The story of how these children (20 and 21 years old) is enough to make you vomit, so I will spare the details. The boy I did not know personally, as he left the community many years ago, at the age of 14, to fight with the FARC. The girl, however, was not a member of that organization. The girl was just a neighbor of our community, who lived further up the path at a farm. And I did know her. She came to my birthday party and she came to town (as in, our town, the biggest in the area) to visit friends. I have a photo of her walking, three months ago, in the last funeral procession. Her back is to the camera, following the casket. Her now orphaned 1-year-old girl is looking back at me over her shoulder. And while neither of these individual were members of the Peace Community, they both grew up in La Union. And they were to both be buried in the Peace Community cemetery. And vigiled in the Peace Community kiosk. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And one neighbor said to me, “a funeral every three months! Dear God.” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">And his mother said to me, “Gina, why is it that we are so good at dying?” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Accompanying the funeral procession, as my neighbors carried up the bodies of their dead on the same path they walk everyday, on the same path they carried these babies up when they were born and their mothers were in hammocks, and on which they are now carrying their caskets, while people cried and the men sweat through their shirts alternating four at a time carrying two heavy caskets, I thought again about Liza’s comment: “it’s pretty amazing the different realities that people live on this planet.” And at the final plateau, before entering town, the men changed and his father and brother carried him to the kiosk for his overnight vigil and my stomach had to turn. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Padre Javier came up to give the funeral mass and when he talked about these two kids’ baptisms I started to cry. He talked again about pain breeding resistance and death inspiring life, but the dad of this child still hadn’t eaten. People came from far and wide for the vigil of these two kids. And every young person in La Union stayed up all night. They talked about these two kids “when they were young” and I looked at them wide-eyed thinking in my head “YOU ARE ALL STILL SO YOUNG!” because they are, at 15 and 16 and 18 and 20 years old. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And all of this, the death and the vigils and the funerals and the youth and the dealing with it all and the community cemetery and the community mourning and the community everything… it all just blows my mind. And it makes for such profound thoughts and statements as: <i>war is not good for children or other living things</i>. I wore a button that said that for a couple years when I was in college. I believed it then, I really did. And I protested the war then, I really did. But now… man oh man… to think that that is the best I can do to sum up how I feel about everything that happens here… that a button I wore in college is the best I can do to sum up how I feel about war… man oh man. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the night of their joint vigil, the sun fell out of the sky a burning candy red and the moon rose a sliver, barely illuminating the candled kiosk. A cow was killed. People played cards and sat silently in the kiosk. I fried potatoes at 3AM and took a nap in a hammock with my neighbor around 4am. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the morning two graves were dug. At the joint funeral people wailed. And military watched from afar. And after a nap, I walked up to the kiosk over looking town to just take a deep breath. From there, I could see him alone, attending to his son’s grave. I walked down to see if I could be of aid, but by the time I walked there he was gone, so I just sat there for a moment. I thought about this girl and this boy. And I looked around the cemetery and remembered all of the funerals of the last year and surprised myself with the amount of people I knew who are buried here. And I thought about “community member” versus “non-community member” and how at the end of life, that doesn’t really matter all that much… since everyone buried here grew up here, and even though they made different decisions and chose different things for themselves, they are all so connected to this place. They grew up in this communal small town, and at some level, they are family of everybody, because that seems to be how it works in a community like this. At the end of the day they are part of the same community history. And some of them are even part of my history. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Later that night, playing cards, his dad asked me in front of his card playing buddies, “Were you over there a little bit ago?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I saw you there.” I said, “I saw you too.” And he said, “Thank you.” And I said nothing.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The last few days of February were spent in LU. I finally got into the garden and tried to revive all of the water-starved plants that had basically been abandoned since I’d arrived. Cristian helped me to weed and water and replant and chase out the chickens. While he was going machete crazy on my trees, I said: “Hey, watch the machete!” And he said, “Do you want a jungle or a garden… you can’t have both!” I had to borrow sharp machetes and when I went barefoot to return them a neighbor leaned out of her house and said- “here comes Soila!” as I reminded her, apparently, while barefoot and with a machete in each hand, of the local schizophrenic woman. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While picking beans, a neighbor confided that Leap Years were good for planting big crops because they had a reputation for luck and large yields. I said, “Yeah for Leap Years!” Then he got serious and said, “Yes, on that side of the coin, but they also have the reputation for a lot of death.” More food and less people to eat it. On the later point he seemed slightly prophetic.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the last few days of February I got sun-kissed on the roof of my neighbor’s home. I ran through the <i>cacaotera </i>and climbed poma trees. I listened to vallenato blast from neighbor´s homes and swung with a friend in hammocks at the kiosk. I drank sugar cane juice and gave away kittens. Charlotte and Elisabeth and I finally found ourselves all three in La Union (was to be a short reunion) and finally finished all of our reports and documents from the five petitions in the previous three weeks. We made work plans and analyzed the next petition. And we talked about Dominique’s arrival and training. Because she will be here soon. And it’s hard to believe that I am more than halfway through my two month term here. <o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-25227543145286696932012-02-23T08:23:00.000-08:002012-02-23T08:23:08.804-08:00Seventh Anniversary of the Masacre in Mulatos and La Resbaloza<div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><img align="left" alt="Luis Eduardo Guerra" border="0" class="left" dfsrc="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/images/luis-eduardo-guerra-SOA-2001_linda-panetta.jpg" height="171" src="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/images/luis-eduardo-guerra-SOA-2001_linda-panetta.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 15px; padding-top: 5px;" width="150" /><i>"We have always said, and in that we are clear, that until this very day we are resisting. And our work is to continue resisting and defending our rights. We don't know until when, because the truth we've lived in our story is this: today we are here talking; tomorrow we may be dead."</i></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; text-align: right;">--Luis Eduardo Guerra, 37 days before his death</div><h2 style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(138, 160, 224); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 3px; clear: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-top: 10px; text-align: left;">Demand justice for San José de Apartadó!</h2><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><br />
</div><table align="right" bgcolor="#DDDDFF" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5" style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 250px;"><tbody>
<tr><td><h4 style="font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-top: 10px; text-transform: uppercase;">ACT NOW</h4><div style="padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; text-align: left !important;"><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT490" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ffEGDJsC7v%2Fo%2BC30wazbVE%2F1S7qPgiX1" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><b>Take action now to protect Peace Community Leaders</b></a></span><b> -- and demand justice seven years after the massacre.</b><br />
<span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT491" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=wkVpnFU6u5sOd6RAfByBv0%2F1S7qPgiX1" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"></a></span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">Yesterday, members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó traveled, on foot and by mule, through heavy rains and oppressive sun, to visit the grave of <b>Luis Eduardo Guerra</b>. Built in the typical <i>campesino</i> style, it is a small wooden house with an aluminum roof, weathered and hidden among tall grasses and guava trees. The journey commemorates the 2005 massacre of seven Peace Community members and a local man. Among the community members was Luis Eduardo, co-founder and celebrated leader.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">Seven years ago, on February 21, 2005, armed uniformed military patrolled the Peace Community near the Mulatos River together with paramilitary "guides." They detained Luis Eduardo, his girlfriend, and his 11-year old son. Army and paramilitary gunmen also attacked a family on a nearby farm. In the days that followed, their bodies were found: killed by machete and mutilated. The dead included Luis Eduardo and Alfonso Bolivar and their families, including Alfonso's six-year-old daughter and an 18-month-old son. The massacre triggered the displacement of most of the Peace Community families in the area, leaving their farms and homes empty.</div><table align="right" bgcolor="#DDDDFF" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5" style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 250px;"><tbody>
<tr><td><div style="padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; text-align: left !important;">Interested in visiting the Peace Community? <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT492" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZxQcVa3JGpl1XV8GIsFpCk%2F1S7qPgiX1" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Join FOR's summer delegation to Colombia!</a></span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">Although today some of them have returned, slowly repopulating the area surrounding the Mulatos River, their struggle continues. Both legal and illegal armed groups remain throughout the region, wandering from place to place and camping inconspicuously in nearby hillsides. Their presence is a reminder that the persecution of members and leaders continues to afflict the community.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><img align="left" alt="Jesús Emilio Tuberquia" border="0" class="left" dfsrc="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/images/jesus-emilio-tuberquia.jpg" height="145" src="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/images/jesus-emilio-tuberquia.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 15px; padding-top: 5px;" width="150" />Their persecution continues. Less than three weeks ago, on February 4, <b>Jesús Emilio Tuberquia</b>, Peace Community legal representative, was violently attacked in the town center of Apartadó. It was one of many situations that have made him fear for his own life. Recounting his experience, he was shaken: "This was just another attempt to destroy our community. It's obvious that they want to see it fall apart."</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT493" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ReDLtM5txhAu5SydesZBz0%2F1S7qPgiX1" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><b>Send a message to the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Michael McKinley about this attack on the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó.</b></a></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">The Peace Community continues to resist. This February's commemoration marks seven years since the massacre alongside the Mulatos River. It marks the death of Luis Eduardo and his family and the loss of various leaders, children, and <i>campesinos</i> throughout the years. It marks a struggle that, despite fear, persecution, and loss, continues to live. Today, Peace Community members will find, once again, the courage to continue.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><b>These kinds of attacks are a reminder that the Peace Community continues to face threats and harassment.</b></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><b><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT494" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sA%2FKQZyQsjQ41c5whuLBd0%2F1S7qPgiX1" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Please take action on behalf of Luis and Jesús now.</a></span></b></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">Gracias/Thanks,<br />
<br />
Liza, Susana, John, Gina, Isaac, Elisabeth, Jonathan, Charlotte, Emily, and the FOR team</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Corbel, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">P.S. Your continued support helps us protect leaders like Jesús Emilio and push for justice in the case of the 2005 massacre. <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT495" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=R%2FPjCmopkTQLg%2BS4ZTKboweiJhop8lRi" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Make a tax-deductible donation toward our anniversary campaign</a></span>, as we celebrate 10 years of FOR's presence in La Union and 15 years since the community was first founded.</div>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-84438803694414500432012-02-07T10:27:00.000-08:002012-02-07T10:27:36.486-08:00HAPPY 10 YEARS TO FOR'S COLOMBIA PEACE PRESENCE!<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">FOR celebrates 10 years of protective accompaniment in the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado... TODAY! Here is a letter I received from Liza, which talks about her first trip up to La Union. I thought I should share....</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The first time I visited the village of La Union in the peace community of San José de Apartadó was in November of 2002. I was working for Global Exchange at the time and had stepped in last minute to lead a joint Global Exchange-FOR delegation to Colombia. Earlier that year FOR had sent its first team of volunteers to accompany the peace community, but after completing their six month term, there were no new volunteers to replace them and the community was left without FOR's presence for a few months. During that time, there was a paramilitary incursion and the people of La Union fled for their safety to a village farther down the valley.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">When we arrived the town was empty; except for Soila (the village crazy lady) and some chickens running around. There was an eerie silence, a kind of silence that comes with violence and fear and the threat of death.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Shortly after our delegation, the people of La Union returned and in 2003, the second team of FOR volunteers arrived. Both the residents of La Union and FOR volunteers have been there every day ever since.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Today marks ten years since that first FOR accompaniment team arrived in La Union. Soila is still there and so are plenty of chickens, along with houses full of people, music playing, televisions on, food being prepared, seeds being planted, corn and yucca and sugar cane being harvested and babies being born. In fact, this March it will be fifteen years since the peace community of San José de Apartadó was founded. Through organizing, speaking out, marching and connecting with national and international organizations, these brave farmers have managed to stay on their lands. This is a feat that is hard for us in the global north to imagine -- the courage it takes to face death and stay put. This anniversary is their success and comes from their incredible perseverance. But we celebrate this as a success of our own as well. With our (and others') accompaniment, the community has been able to face the constant pressures of this conflict while building their alternative vision into the future.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It's hard for me to believe that it's been ten years since that first time I walked up to La Union; and fifteen years since I first set foot in Bogota, as a wide-eyed exchange student with no idea what I was getting myself into. This thing with Colombia has been a potent love affair!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I feel blessed to be living in Bogota these days, and to be connected to this place, these people and this struggle throughout these past years. I feel humbled to be working for an organization like FOR, which has included many great activists in its ranks over its almost 100 year trajectory. I feel fortunate to be using the tool of accompaniment, one of the best ways I think us northerners can express our solidarity with the struggles of people in other places (without sticking our noses into their business and telling them how to organize their movements) while at the same time building bridges between us and them, weaving their and our worlds together.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Many of you have supported my work or FOR in general over the years... We've collaborated, thought and dreamed together.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I invite you to celebrate our ten year anniversary with us by making a donation towards our work here:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT34" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT35" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://www.imforfor.org/" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">www.imforfor.org</a></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">And thank you for conspiring to believe in a different world!!!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">With love and in solidarity,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br id="yui_3_2_0_26_132856766048570" /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">liza</span>ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-27562090130782745912012-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:002012-02-02T10:29:19.583-08:00Heading back to the war zone...<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1114</o:Words> <o:Characters>6354</o:Characters> <o:Company>Fellowship of Reconciliation</o:Company> <o:Lines>52</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>14</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>7454</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">I can’t believe two months have passed already… so many transitions- mental, physical- and I feel there is still a lot to be processed. It is hard to believe I am headed back to Uraba on Tuesday! <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Coming out of the rural jungle war zone to the capital metropolis of Bogota provided for some of the strangest and most intense culture shock I had every experienced. It never ceases to amaze me the different realities in which people live in this world, and it never ceases to amaze me how adaptable we are as human beings. The transition is always hard and intense and seemingly shakes up everything inside me, but then it is just <i>over…</i> without so much as a goodbye. Here I am, two months later, feeling as if I have always been in Bogota. As if it has always been home. As if two months ago the turmoil of my mind and body in the transition never actually existed. How strange. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Bogota, the work is different. In December Jon and I quietly accompanied contentious-objector clowns in their direct actions in public parks, as they tried to spread the word about the army’s illegal recruitment practices. We drank chai teas at meetings inside the US Embassy compound, where the words coming out of my mouth about our concern for Peace Community members under paramilitary threats were pumped with mental images of the families I know there. We talk with our counterpart organizations not only about Uraba, but about Colombia as a whole and learn about different communities and different movements and the world of human rights in this country. We read the paper. We have internet. We publish articles and work on pop-ed materials. We plan for the Autstrian delgates, who arrive this week- setting up meetings and logistics and picking restaurants for their visit. We respond to our team in La Union, and we back them up in meetings with other organizations and state entities, and with the diplomatic core. We plan events around the upcoming anniversaries of the community and we participate in planning for the alternative Summit of the Americas. We deal with the escalation from our December urgent action of paramilitary threats in La Esperanza to a New Year 2012 full Paramilitary take-over of the entire Uraba region (more on that in a later post). We work a lot on a wide-array of issues. I dig it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Bogota, life is different. On a personal level, December was spent mainly culture shocking in Bogota. We wear our own clothing. We shop in markets where we can get any and all food items, not only what is in season. We take hot showers and drink cold drinks. We have good cell phone service and access to the internet. We are anonymous and unimportant in a large urban space; our presence gives no more life to this city than anyone’s. And all of that, once I settled into it, was extremely refreshing. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Over the holidays, I went home to Minneapolis, where the lack of snow had my culture shock pumped with even more confusion and a general feeling of of ‘where am i?’ and ‘when am i?’. I marinated in the love of friends and family and I reconnected with people whom I hadn’t seen all year. The life pf an ex-pat means missing so many things and so I met new babies and heard about missed weddings. I heard engagement announcements and agreed to be maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding. I saw live music. I played broomball on ice. I fattened up on delicious north country foods. I let old friends and close family fill me up with their warm love and caring support. I talked about Colombia and work and I talked about other places and people and things and it was all a holidazzle whirlwind pumped with my culture shock. I rung in the New Year state-side with dear friends and then I flew back to Bogota. I landed in the metropolis for the second time in two months, but this time I didn’t feel overwhelmed at all. This time I felt: ahh, this is where I am meant to be. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I started dating a boy named Cristian. At his cousin’s wedding, I wore a long silk dress and high-heeled shoes. His mother’s side of the family is from Cali (salsa dancing capital of the world) and the bride and groom’s first dance as a married couple was a fast-paced salsa. In fact, watching some of the best salsa I have ever seen (in formal wear, mind you) was pretty much a highlight of my Colombian existence so far. Salsa in formal wear… a far cry from vallenato in rubber boots. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon’s birthday weekend took us to Choachi, a town outside of Bogota. With one $4, 1 hr bus ride you can disappear over the mountains from Bogota and find yourself in a landscape that resembles pastoral England. There was literally no sign of the city in site. We went to this lazy town during the city’s municipal festival (which means we went there with half of Bogota) and danced salsa to La 33 in the plaza and strolled small towns streets eating Feria food. We hiked to “hot springs” (which turned out to be cold pools) and enjoyed fresh country air. I am still in my honeymoon phase with the city, but it felt good to know I can easily escape the concrete jungle, if I ever need to.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Last night Jon and I had dinner at Liza and Mika’s. They live in an old house in the historic downtown of Bogota. Their landlord estimates the home is some 500 years old. The entryway mosaicked floor includes stone and brick and pig bone (a show of wealth from the time). Mika’s dog has been digging up and eating the pig bone. That’s right, gnawing on 500 year old pig-bone. This, along with much of our warm and happy dinner conversation, blew my mind. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My life in the capital has been filled with dinner parties (my wild rice soup was a hit- even among the Colombians!) and north country food contraband, including all sorts of delicious cheeses. My life has been weekend strolls in city parks and silly city evening dates with Cristian. My life has been dancing salsa in clubs and in kitchens and making people laugh with my ability to sing vallenato hits. My life has been sunny early mornings with a cup of coffee, overlooking the mountains that surround the city and late afternoon puddle jumping in the typical evening downpours. My life has been images of the 11 million residents, each of them an individual: 100s of people walking over bridges on their way to the office in the morning, bike messengers weaving through traffic, store owners mopping the concrete outside their tiendas, bus drivers hanging out of the side of their busses to smoke a cigarette. My life has been adjusting to these people being the life of the concrete jungle, breathing life into the city’s walls. My life has been exploring neighborhoods and picturing myself living in them, walking crosstown for meetings in various parts of the city and observing my co-inhabitants along the way. My life has been reflecting on the time I spent in the war zone and preparing to live there again. My life has been delicious foods and evening cocktails, cold drinks and hot showers, house parties, weekend getaway trips and skype calls to make far-away friends seem closer. I have settled into it. I have been completely taken by Bogota, and am looking forward to life here again come April. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This weekend a dear friend from Guatemala is visiting, we have Isaac and Elisabeth in town (they are leading the arriving Austrian delegation), the Austrian delegation taking over our apartment, and Gina in full-on pack, organize and move mode. Should provide for a flurry of activity leading up to my departure. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On Tuesday I head back to the community for two months. I will travel the same day that, 10 years ago, the very first FOR volunteers hiked to La Union to begin permanent accompaniment. I will go back to the community on FOR’s 10<sup>th</sup> Anniversary with the Peace Community of San Jose Apartado, and that feels wonderful. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-78945432361105426832011-12-15T13:23:00.000-08:002011-12-15T13:23:25.461-08:00URGENT ACTION- paramilitaries threaten peace community in La EsperanzaHey Everyone,<br />
You may recall from my blog that I was in La Esperanza a few weeks ago, accompanying the Peace Community there. This was part of the three international accompaniment organizations that work with the Peace Community (PBI of England, Palomas of Italy and FOR of the USA) rotating through the village in response to hightened threats from illegal armed paramilitary groups. <br />
<br />
<b>U.S. CITIZENS:</b> FOR released an Urgent Action Letter this week, in response to what is happening in La Esperanza. Please take a few moments to politically support the Peace Community, which has been under severe paramilitary threat since mid-November, by signing this letter. It only takes a few seconds and the letter was written, in part, by yours truly. Click <a href="http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2507/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9015">here </a>to sign the letter to the U.S. Ambassador in Colombia and support the Peace Community in their resistance to militant oppression. <br />
<br />
<b>NOT A U.S. CITIZEN, BUT STILL LOVE GINA, HER WORK and the FOR COLOMBIA PROGRAM? </b>Below is a copy of the letter to U.S. Ambassador Michael McKinley, for all you amazing friends of mine who are not US citizens, but would be willing to send a similar letter via e-mail to your ambassador in Colombia.<br />
<br />
Thanks for supporting me and my work, thanks on behalf of FOR's Colombia program team, and thank you for supporting the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in their peaceful struggle this holiday season,<br />
Gina<br />
Dear Ambassador McKinley,<br />
<br />
I am writing to express my concern about recent paramilitary threats and actions against the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in northwest Colombia. <br />
<br />
On two separate occasions in the final weeks of November, armed men self-identified as paramilitaries entered the village of La Esperanza, where several Peace Community members live. These illegal armed groups met with village members, demanded future collaboration, ordered the closure of the village’s two stores and began limiting the amount of food residents can bring up to their families from town. In addition to being inside village limits, many paramilitaries are present in the surrounding area, operating checkpoints along the paths. On November 22, paramilitary and guerrilla gunmen reportedly engaged in intensive combat nearby. <br />
<br />
The recent incursion of paramilitary groups is only the latest example of the violence the Peace Community has suffered over the past year. Since March 2011, paramilitary and other illegal armed groups have killed 12 civilians from the San José area and continue to threaten the Peace Community with target lists of those to be murdered next, despite heavy military and police presence. <br />
<br />
Paramilitaries, collaborating with the Colombian military, have been involved in the majority of the 195 deaths the Peace Community has suffered since its founding in 1997. In response to such violence, only a few low-ranking army men and paramilitaries have been tried and convicted. Given the history of paramilitary and state-sponsored violence, ongoing impunity and U.S. financial support to the Colombian army, this recent surge in presence is certain to put the civilians of La Esperanza in danger of violence.<br />
<br />
I respectfully urge you to:<br />
<br />
* Contact Colombian government officials about the paramilitary groups' continued operations, contrary to the assertion that they effectively demobilized in 2006. It is the state’s responsibility to dismantle all paramilitary structures.<br />
<br />
* Contact the 17th Brigade to reiterate your concern for the safety of Peace Community members and other civilians living in La Esperanza. Remind the brigade of their responsibility to protect the Peace Community in accordance with the community’s principles of nonviolence and non-involvement in the armed conflict, and the protective measures issued by the Inter-American Human Rights Court.<br />
<br />
I look forward to hearing back from you on your actions to protect the Peace Community and other civilians affected by the armed conflict. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.<br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
(Your Name)ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-92046647295020223452011-12-09T12:33:00.000-08:002011-12-15T13:29:17.599-08:00Are you for FOR?PLEASE <a href="http://imforfor.org/">click here</a> and help our Campaign: <br />
15 years of resistance, 10 years of presence, Every Single Day.<br />
<br />
Alright everyone, here's the deal- FOR's Colombia program is kicking off a fundraiser that will run through March of 2012. <br />
<br />
This amazing opportunity for you to support peace in Colombia is in celebration of two major anniversaries coming up this spring: <br />
1.) The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado will be celebrating 15 years of peaceful resistance to militant repression and <br />
2.) The Fellowship of Reconciliation will be celebrating 10 years as full-time accompaniers to these inspiring human rights defenders. <br />
Could there be a better cause for which to donate your hard-earned cash? <br />
I thought not.<br />
<br />
But wait, there’s more! Not only are your FORistas on the ground committed to working for Peace in Colombia and around the world, they are also quite creative and artistic. As you will note on the donation website, gifts are included for donations of 50 dollars or more... gifts designed by current FOR volunteers just like me! <br />
<br />
"And what," you may ask, "will $50 do for FOR?" Great question! 50 dollars will support one human rights accompanier for one day in the Peace Community. With some quick math we can see that a mere $350 will support a FOR volunteer for an entire week! $1,000 will support a FOR volunteer for an entire month! And (gasp!) $12,000 will support a FOR volunteer to protect the Peace Community for an entire year! Talk about bang for your buck! <br />
<br />
As you see on the lovely FOR-volunteer-designed website, you also have the opportunity to donate “in honor” of someone. Here are some thoughts on that cool feature:<br />
1. You could donate in my honor, which would be amazing, since I will actually directly serve the Peace Community due to your donation. <br />
2. You could donate in honor of a loved one as a holiday gift or a birthday gift or a “hey, thinking of you so I sent a donation to support peace in Colombia” gift… <br />
3. You could donate in honor of all grass-roots communities working around the world for a more just and peaceful existence. <br />
<br />
Thank you in advance for visiting ImforFOR.org, where all this information is presented with pretty colors and graphics. <br />
<br />
And THANK YOU in advance for donating to support me, FOR’s accompaniment work, the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado and PEACE IN COLOMBIA. <br />
<br />
Have a wonderful Holiday Season,<br />
Ginaginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-55190084658257822232011-12-07T10:38:00.000-08:002011-12-07T10:38:32.494-08:00City LightsFrom the plane I say goodbye to Uraba’s lush green mountainous and hello to Medellin’s brown river and tall buildings. While waiting for my plane transfer, I eat lunch in the terminal. There is table service and a waitress dressed stylishly in hoop earrings and high heels. The news blaring from four TV’s at once talks of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” and I realize I forgot about Thanksgiving. The news talks of relations between countries and elections and protests. I realize that all of a sudden I will be up on the news. On politics. On the world. I forgot what it was like to have a TV in front of me. Commercials. Anchors. I forgot so many things. Did I lose them? Will I find them? <br />
<br />
Another time up into the air and back down and I land in a familiar city. Welcome to Bogota in its nightlight splendor. For the first time in months I feel chilled. Cold, actually. For the first time in months I am cold. I arrive to an empty apartment and look out over the city to the distant hills as every other FOR volunteer has done upon leaving the campo for the capital metropolis and I feel so very strange. My body has made the transition from rural war zone to one of the biggest cities in Latin America, but my mind has a long ways to go. Just as I start shaking (Cold? Confusion? Too many thoughts all at once?), I look down to see a letter left by my roommate and posted mail with my name on it from the states. Birthday cards and presents from my mom and my Grandma. All of a sudden I will be connected to my family again. And I sit down and I read the cards over and over. And then I think about how I’d had my morning coffee in La Union. I think about my friends that left me in Apartado and waved goodbye to my taxi. I think about Emily… How will I readjust to life without Emily? Then I take my first hot shower in 8 months.<br />
<br />
In the night, in a half-sleep/half-identify the campo noise outside your window state I think to myself, “what a strange noise for the rain to make” and then I wake up to car horns. I wake from dreams of the community with a vallenato song in my head, but I listen to Bob Dylan over coffee. It rains at night here too, but the apartment building is tall and I don’t hear it intensely on my roof. Mostly I know it rained because I hear cars splashing through puddles on the pavement. Isaac and I go for breakfast. We eat pastries full of ricotta cheese and spinach while our co-workers in La Union take off on an accompaniment in response to emergencies La Esperanza. Isaac goes to work, but I get a few “adjustment” days which works out fine, because one of my dearest friends is visiting from Holland. And because I have not seen my friends in Bogota for months. <br />
<br />
Slumber parties with Lisa and Diwy and Luna are just what the doctor ordered. Lisa works, Luna goes to day-care and then Diwy and I have nothing to do but everything we want. Diwy and I walk city streets and shop for needed items in my new city life. We eat delicious foods, which are ten times as delicious for me because I have been eating the same thing for 8 months. In the grocer I smell guava and immediately think of the tree outside our house. I smell it, but I can’t find it anywhere. Eventually I find it. It’s packaged in plastic. Together we try and adjust to Bogota’s altitude and together we laugh at our failure to do so. We go to Isaac’s goodbye dinner and eat curries. We catch up on life and love and future plans and current adventures. We laugh a lot. <br />
<br />
Diwy decides we “need to get out of the city” and, amazingly, after 24 hours of being here, I agree. We road trip to Villa de Leyva, a small colonial Colombian tourist town three hours outside of the capital in pastoral Boyacá. We stroll the central plaza and take photos of ourselves. We drink beer and laugh and loiter in shops, trying on clothes we never buy. We café hop and drink coffees and chocolates and teas. We try and hike a “half hour hike” but it takes us 3 hours because we literally can not breathe in the altitude. We arrive at the summit just in time for a thunderstorm and Diwy pops up her umbrella. We eat artisan pastries in the rain on top of a mountain and then nearly die sliding back down the slick mossy rock in the rain. We’d had great plans to hike to beautiful pastoral waterfalls and lakes, but in the name of oxygen decide to meander cobbled streets instead. People do not understand my Caribbean vernacular. They do understand Diwy’s crystal clear Guatemalan accent. She does most of the negotiating. <br />
<br />
Diwy watched me culture shock and let me talk around in circles confused about life. She walked arm in arm with me under the same umbrella and made me laugh talking about all things relevant and what becomes of us through the choices we make. We talked a lot about Colombia. And the world. And travel. And our expat lives. And how in our current society people feel so worldly. And then Diwy said, “People in the first world feel like they are so connected, and they are. They are so connected without knowing what they are connected to.” I was so thankful to have Diwy. <br />
<br />
Back in Bogota I unpack my bags and set up my room. I look around and try to adjust to the idea that this is home. I straighten my hair for the first time since Emily chopped it all off our first month in the campo (sans comb) and am impressed with her straight-lined cut. I try to come to terms with the fact that my days are complete without talking to the same people I talked to everyday in the community. I take naps and try to pull myself out of campo time in order to go out dancing. Diwy, Jon and I go out dancing. We dance vallenato and salsa and reggaeton. We bar hop through city lights. I dream about the community. I try on every sweater I own and thank the weather because I love sweaters. Jon and I walk through Bogota’s central plaza and shop for a hammock. I revel in my love for Latin American plazas on Sundays. I buy a colorful umbrella. We buy tropical flowers off the street to put in our home. The kind of tropical flowers that a week ago, I could have picked myself. We get a bright blue hammock for the living room and some Christmas lights to get into the December groove. Jon and I cook good food and watch American movies from comfortable couches. A helicopter flies low and my heart pounds- some internalized physical reaction even though my mind knows that this helicopter is not out to bomb anyone. I waste a river’s worth of water every time I get into the hot shower. It is just that good. <br />
<br />
Starting work mixes another world into the whirlwind. There is so much to do! A conference on laws for human rights defenders, a meeting with a group of conscientious objectors, conference calls with people in Austria and the states, planning publications and articles, meeting with other accompanying organizations and hearing about their work and partners, planning webinars, learning about massacres elsewhere in the country and the overall situation in Colombia. In Bogota conversations are so packed- they are jammed with so many themes and topics and everything is so beautifully put together. People are eloquent and they flow from one human rights issue to the next and activists are pumped and people talk fluidly about death and policy and corporations and protest. I know I can do that… I have done that… but right now I am used to conversing about yucca. And when someone says there is an Amnesty International urgent action for the town of La Esperanza in the Peace Community, I don’t just think about the need to respond to it, I actually see the faces of the people there. I think about things they have said to me. I think about the fact that I was there two weeks ago. Is that healthy? Effective? Normal? Inspiring? Scary? There are so very many things I do not know. And so many things that I have a feeling I knew one time but now seem to have lost. This is the first time I have culture shocked within the same country I currently live in. Weird. As in with all things transition or otherwise, there is something to be said for being gentle with oneself. <br />
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The rain has started to pour down on our office roof. The rain somehow brings me back to myself. In concretely happy news from my new amazing Bogota life, I am going to a free Calle 13 concert in a park tonight. I suppose his advice is as good as any… atrevete.ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-27354091823769070312011-12-06T14:59:00.000-08:002011-12-06T14:59:52.172-08:00Gina turns 29 and then leaves the peace community in the war zone...On November 23rd I woke up at 5AM to a decorated house. Charlotte and Elisabeth had snuck in during the night to decorate the house where I sleep with balloons and a fun little birthday game- they folded up a bunch of pieces of paper with suggestions of what people should give me for my birthday and pasted them to the wall. As my neighbors started to come by on their way to work, they were instructed to choose one. The gift suggestions were pretty great- flowers, hugs, dances, tell her how awesome she is, take a photo with her- and I felt pretty loved.<br />
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At 5:30 I took off with a couple of my pals to get wood for the stove we were making in order to cook hot chocolate and bunuelos for the entire town. Around the same time my amazing best friend turned cake-baker started whipping up birthday cakes in her cake-mixing bowl (made from a seed that hangs from the tree outside our house). I booted up, put on my ridiculous pink peace glasses, placed all of the flowers given to me in my hair, and threw a large woven basket over my shoulder. As the moon and stars gave way to the sun, we hiked up through the cacautera and down to the river in search of dry branches, passing my favorite view of the community along the way. We had a photo shoot at the river’s edge and walked down the sandbar in the middle of it. We posed with jungle leaves that dwarf a gringa, and on flat smooth slabs of river rock that allow the rapids to break against them, but never budge. We filled our basket with heavy macheted wood in the shape of thin sticks and we put tree trunks over our shoulders to be axed down back at home. The hour of my birth I was wading in a war zone jungle river… this thought crossed my mind. I wonder if my mother would have expected as much the day I was born. I chose river rocks to bring home as a birthday gift to myself.<br />
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In the campo, eggs are cracked on the birthday gal’s head. Sometimes. Actually, there were 6 birthdays the same week as mine, and I think I was the only one to get eggs cracked on my head. Four in total. Always a surprise, and always smelly. I showered three times, used nearly an entire bottle of shampoo and still couldn’t get rid of the stench. Most people got a kick out of my plastered, yoked hair. One laughing lady said to me, “Who did that to you?” I listed the names of the culprits. She said, “They haven’t done that to a FOR volunteer before.” “Really?” “Nope. They must really like you.” “Yeah. Clearly.”<br />
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By mid-morning the bouquet on the kitchen table had grown considerably and I had received far more hugs than a normal day. I made breakfast from the remaining eggs in the house (a defensive move) and then headed to a friend’s porch to make popsicles. While I had planned to take the day off of work, it just so happened that the Internet connection was out (surprise!) and thus Charlotte and Elisabeth decided to jump on the “why work when it’s Gina’s birthday” train. We went to the swimming hole. We walked further down the canyon than I ever had before and we swam under waterfalls. When it started to rain and the river started to rise, we shimmied back up the rocks and waded along the banks, criss-crossing as necessary to get back home. <br />
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It was afternoon and time to get serious about cooking. Cake decoration was in full force, and soon our kitchen was a bunuelo and chocolate factory- cheese grinding and flour kneading, deep oil frying, and wood stove burning. The cakes were decorated pink and blue and when she finished decorating them, she put them on top of my bed so the kids wouldn’t get at them. Not quite a foolproof plan… Sapa got to one cake… and then Sapa was nearly killed by a campesina baker (“10 hours of baking for the cat to lick the frosting!?!”). Thank God the cook has a good sense of humor. We chopped off the cat-eaten corner and then salvaged the rest. <br />
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The sun set with a golden hue and I thought I may be in one of the most beautiful places in the world to turn 29. <br />
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When the fried food went a wafting into the night sky, my neighbors came by. They wished me well and told me how wonderful I was. (I was never sure if these hugs and well-wishes came from them directly or if they had chosen said paper on the wall, but in the end it didn’t matter.) We ate bunuelos and listened to vallenato. Even though the community is in mourning and there was to be no dancing, they granted me one birthday dance (“she’ll dance alone anyway, so she may as well do it right”). It was vallenato. And amazing. The kids played with balloons and the adults talked and laughed and gorged on bunuelos. Those who stayed late got stuck in the rain and ended up staying really late- later than anyone has ever stayed over. Mostly I think they stayed because the company was good and the party was fun- afterall, the rain never hurt anyone.<br />
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I was supposed to get up the day after my birthday to pack and prepare to leave. I was supposed to finish working and say my goodbyes and prepare for the big city downtown. So I did. I packed and cleaned and organized my life into one bag. I finished up work and pulled documents off the computer. I walked through town and said goodbye. I did all of these things right on schedule, but in the end there were so many landslides that I couldn’t go anywhere. <br />
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I won a few extra days in the community and because they were unexpected they were oh so fun. Some people in the community are bad at goodbyes (if only they stuck around to see me try and say goodbye they would feel better about themselves) and so they left at 4 in the morning for the fields so that they wouldn’t have to say anything or see me go. I sure did love the looks on their faces when they saw me at lunch time: “What are you doing here?” “I simply couldn’t go with out saying goodbye…”<br />
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In my “extra” days in the community, I ran around laughing like a crazy gringa. I cartwheeled and wheelbarrowed and skipped from rock to rock through town. I walked jungle paths and crossed jungle streams. I bathed in jungle waterfalls and jumped in jungle pools. I pulled with all my might to get yucca out of the earth and lifted with all my might to carry a tree on my shoulder. I celebrated a friend’s birthday by eating masamora and I listened to my neighbors whistle. I listened to them rhythmically work their land, swinging a machete without a break for hours on end. I danced in the kiosks overlooking town and played with my favorite campo kids. I tanned next to drying cacao seeds on my friend’s roof and I disappeared behind huge green jungle leaves to protect myself from the Caribbean sun. I talked to a friend of mine in Bogota from atop a jungle mountain. I saw a poisonous snake, and then another and then another. I walked in the rain without changing my pace. I appreciated everything from the symmetry of the palm tree to papaya juice with a squeeze of lime. <br />
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I cried saying goodbye to the people I truly love and respect in La Union. Some of them cried too. One said, “It is better to laugh than cry.” So we did. And another said, “This is not a sad goodbye. You will come back. A sad goodbye is when your son leaves to fight in the jungle. That is a sad goodbye. That is a forever goodbye.” Knowing she was talking from experience, I wiped my eyes. Knowing I was crying from experience, she started to laugh. <br />
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My last sunrise in the community was clouded over. I took off across the plain and headed down the hill with my two best pals. We talked on the walk down- commenting on the path and the jungle and the memories we have of the places and people we passed. They accompanied me all the way to the city and I held their hands crossing the road and stopped them ahead of cars, just like they’d held my hand crossing rivers and stopped me ahead of prickly jungle thorn bushes. And over juice we talked about this. And we talked of other things good and honest and funny. And we talked about how lucky we are to be such good friends. <br />
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Then I got in a cab and I went to the airport and I waited in the waiting room for the plane. I waited with mud from the jeep still on my shoes and prickly jungle thorns from my hike still on my backpack. I looked out the window at the palm trees in the Caribbean sun and the mountains in the distance where my neighbors were just coming down from the fields for lunch. And then I boarded a plane for the capital.ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119989281150937701.post-26282676680193679492011-11-22T11:13:00.000-08:002011-11-22T11:13:26.869-08:00No se Quien es mas Fuerte, la Vida o la Muerte.The first time Ottoniel was hospitalized overnight in late July, everyone got pretty scared. As an integral community leader, he could tell stories spanning the entire process leading up to and including the creation of the Peace Community. As the single community carpenter he could look back and see that it was he who literally set foundations and built what is today the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado. It seemed his hospitalization came out of the blue. He was back the next day, though, and the “lung infection” seemed to be subsiding. I brought him marigolds from our garden and told them that they had committed to making him feel better. Later in the week his second wife came to ask us for remedies from our garden to make him a tea. And Emily and I brought him chamomile from town. He quit smoking, and I tried to as well in solidarity. <br />
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When we accompanied him to the hospital in August and saw the radiographs of his lungs, Emily and my suspicions were confirmed that this man did not have a minor “lung infection” as the local medics had been claiming for nearly a year. I also did not believe he had pneumonia. Or bronchitis. Or even some sort of tropical lung disease that I’d never heard of. I was pretty sure that this man had cancer. But Ottoniel was jovial and kind. He joked with us and thanked us for our visit. <br />
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The next day while I was accompanying his son in the jungle, he turned and asked me how I thought his father was. “He’s fighting,” I said. “He’s really strong,” his son said. “He’s really sick,” I said. But his son just kept saying, “He’s really strong.” <br />
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Once he was so weak he couldn’t climb the hill even on a horse, he stayed in LH. I saw him often, stopped to talk to him every time I went through. I asked him if there was anything from town that could make him happy. He said he really liked green apples. And I brought him one. Every time I went down.<br />
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At the end of October his granddaughter turned five years old. Emily and I were accompanying his son through the jungle again and asked him what he was going to do to celebrate the event. He turned to us and said, “the greatest gift my daughter has is that her parents are alive.”<br />
Before he was so sick that he couldn’t talk I was lamenting to him how I hadn’t been out to see several of the peace community villages. He said to stop that because FOR was supposed to be in LU. That’s why we were asked to accompany. You are accompanying all the time, he said. La Union needs you, he told me.<br />
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Once he was hospitalized permanently I went to see him everytime I was in Apartadó. And he just got sicker and sicker and smaller and smaller and before long he couldn’t talk at all. <br />
It had been five years since his son had been to town and his oldest daughter was nearly nine months pregnant, but all four of his kids put on their nicest clothes and paid the money to go down to town and see him in the hospital.<br />
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When he asked to see his mom in the first week of November, I started to cry. His siblings and his in-laws brought her down. They carried her across rivers and carried her across plains so that she could go and see her first born son die. She would see him die now as a full-grown man as she had seen multiple of her other full-grown sons die, shot in a massacre right in front of her, and how she had seen other of her children die, before they even had the chance to grow. The day she went to see him, she had to make the decision as whether or not to put him on life support. <br />
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The community work day took us high into the hills the day after the family decided not to put Ottoniel on life-support. I was removing cacao seeds with his sister when she suddenly sat down under a cacao tree with her machete at her side, set her head in her hands, looked out over the jungle landscape with La Union tucked away in a distant valley, and began to silently cry.<br />
Ottoniel died at two in the morning and by six funeral arrangements were being made. The plan to bring up the body was being set. People were donating horses and mules to bring up the materials for the burial and people were volunteering to dig the grave and help haul up the body. In the United States, when someone dies, there are so many different people involved. There are so many processes and laws and rules and regulations. Accompanying through this death was very different. Emily and I went about trying to do what you do when people die- giving our condolences to the family, helping in whatever way we could to make the preparations for the funeral easier, agreeing to accompany the funeral procession up from San José. <br />
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The morning he died, the flowers his daughter planted in our garden the week Emily and I first arrived in La Union started to bloom.<br />
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The walk down to retrieve Ottoniel was so sunny- there was not a cloud in the sky- but there was a constant rain. It was one of the most beautiful walks I have experienced since being in the Peace Community. I kept thinking to myself, “it is so beautiful today.”We passed hordes of people walking up for the funeral and vigil. When we arrived and met the hearse in San Jose, the men attached his casket to a long log. They hung it from this log and two at a time took turns balancing the log on their shoulders and carrying him up the hill. And we walked in procession as his family and friends carried him up the hill. We walked behind them across the river and through the forests and across the fields and up the vertical hill, all the way home to the kiosk where the vigil was planned. <br />
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Because the body can’t be alone, the entire community stayed up all night for the vigil. They killed a cow and cooked it. The burned candles and talked. Some told jokes and some cried. And the night was clear, the first without rain in at least a month. There were candles in the kiosk. And a light fog. His daughter sat on a rock next to me, doubled over and cried on my lap. I rubbed her back and felt her tears falling down my legs.<br />
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I didn’t look at the body. Neither did his pregnant daughter or his distraught mother. In fact, none of the pregnant women were allowed to look at his body and neither were any of the individuals who suffer from “nightmares or nervousness,” but the great majority of the community did look. And several of them confirmed that when his family was hysterically crying at the casket his corpse also produced tears. His corpse was crying because they were so sad.<br />
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The sun came up to us playing cards and drinking coffee around his body. Planning for the burial, at first light the volunteers to dig his grave headed to the cemetery. I watched as his apprentice measured out and constructed the space for his casket to be put to rest. I watched the men rotate through, shoveling dirt in the hot sun. I watched his son, after a night of no sleep, dig his father’s grave.<br />
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By mid-afternoon it was confirmed that family travelling from Medellin would not make it up in time for the funeral, and thus the vigil was extended for another night to wait for them. The second night the group was considerably smaller. We sat in hammocks hung around the kiosk and listened to music quietly. At 3 AM I made potatoes. There was a thick fog and a biting wind, but it did not rain. Everyone was bundled in sweatshirts drinking coffee and trying to see eachother through the god. We shivered a lot. And stared at candles flickering in the kiosk. Walking back and forth from the kiosk to the house through the fog, it was hard not to think about the haunting.<br />
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My neighbors have walked all of the paths in this village a million times. They walk them a handful of times a day. Somehow seeing the funeral procession take off from the kiosk, I got the feeling that everything was happening in slow motion. That walk down and across the canyon on the day of the funeral seemed endless… down and up the ravine to the plot in the cementary. His children all made eye contact with me as they walked by and I couldn’t help but start to cry.<br />
As the final preparations were being made, people wailed over his casket and cried silently in the distance. A letter was read. A song was sung. His son just kept doing things, fixing a shovel, re-running the hose for water. Three of his four kids were there, two girls and a boy. When they were going to close off the casket his older daughter fell wailing on her brother and sister. His son collapsed to one knee and all three of them buckled down on top of eachother and cried silently. I think this image will be in my mind forever. This image of pure grief. It seemed to go on and on and then she yelled out through the tears- “Daddy! Why WHY did you have to leave us!?” And their grief became my grief and it was like I just didn’t even know what to do. <br />
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Walking back from the cemetery alone, Emily and I both start to cry. Sleep-deprived and hungry and tired and emotionally exhausted we hugged in front of the library and tried to come up with an action plan. What are we supposed to do? Feeling so cracked out and lost and grief ridden as though all of the grief of the community was ours. All of the pain was ours. We decide to make some breakfast, sweep the floor of the kitchen and then go to bed. And that is exactly what we do. Because sometimes you just have to follow an action plan.<br />
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After a nap I go to visit his mother. She just stares straight ahead. She walks in circles around the kitchen looking for an egg she is holding in her hand. Nobody tells her, whether because they don’t notice or don’t want to break her thought pattern I’m unsure. I told her. I said, “the egg you are looking for is in your hand.” And she said, “you’re right.” She cracked it, put it in a bowl, and walked out of the kitchen to sit in a chair and stare straight ahead.<br />
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For the week and a half following Ottoniel’s burial, we prayed a novena in the kiosk each night. On the ninth night, on the last amen of the last prayer, without any wind blowing whatsoever, the candle went out on its own. His wife turned to me and said, “You see, he is telling us he doesn’t want us to mourn anymore.”<br />
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Since he died two weeks ago, nearly all of my conversations in the community have been centered around death. While sitting in her kitchen surrounded by geese, we came to the conclusion that neither of us knew if it was life or death that was strongest, but that as humans we need to be brave when facing both. The community is still in mourning, of course. I have been looking for strength in the cacaotera, looking out over a breezy point and reminding myself that it’s all gonna be ok. That it’s all going to be fine. <br />
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And then this weekend, two weeks to the day after his death, his daughter gave birth to a baby girl.<br />
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November has had me reflecting a lot on accompaniment. There is accompaniment in a professional sense. There is non-interference and observing from afar. So much of our work is based on analyzing this and making sure we are not crossing lines, that we are remaining distinct and distant. There is, as PBI puts in their slogan, the idea that we are only “creating the space for peace.” But what happens when professional becomes personal. When a friend’s father dies, son dies, brother dies. When your observation becomes your participation. When empathy makes the pain of those around you become your pain as well. When you realize that your relationships with the community are not only based in the professional, but rather in the very personal… they are based in love.ginahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04831411653738999190noreply@blogger.com